House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is demanding that President Joe Biden use his Executive Branch authority to order stricter enforcement of immigration and border security laws and policies after he reversed nearly all of former President Donald Trump’s policies on his first day in office.
According to a letter reviewed by Axios, the Speaker said Biden must use his authority to halt the waves of migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. on a daily basis while overwhelming U.S. Border Patrol resources.
“We passed H.R. 2 more than six months ago, but Senate Democrats have refused to act on it,” Johnson writes, referencing Republicans’ tough border package. “While a bipartisan group of Senators has begun extensive negotiations over the past few weeks to try to find a compromise, they have not yet been able to finalize an agreement.”
Among the policies he recommended, Johnson said Biden should reimpose Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that required asylum seekers to stay south of the border while their cases were adjudicated by U.S. immigration courts.
“Likewise, Johnson said Biden should immediately end his administration’s use of various parole programs that make up much of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Catch and Release network,” Breitbart News reported.
Biden should also resume building the border wall as well as speed up “removal so that aliens are screened and immediately removed if they cannot demonstrate asylum eligibility,” Johnson wrote.
One of Johnson’s most significant demands, however, is that the administration should stop handing out work permits to anyone who crossed illegally into the country.
The commitment to provide work permits serves as a significant motivator for illegal immigration since wages, albeit low, still surpass those in many other countries from which the majority of border crossers come. These work permits are also utilized by border crossers to settle debts with Mexican drug cartels, highlighting that the policy contributes to the enrichment of international human smugglers, Breitbart noted further.
Last week, Arizona’s Democratic governor became the latest state official to defy Biden over his immigration and border policies, as more members of his party break with him over the issue ahead of the 2024 elections.
Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order directing elements of the Arizona National Guard to deploy to the state’s border with Mexico as the illegal migrant crisis worsens.
In it, she blamed Biden for the “unmitigated humanitarian crisis” across the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border while further criticizing him for his refusal to direct federally-ordered troops to a portion of her state where thousands of migrants per day enter the country illegally and done so for weeks.
“Yet again, the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe,” Hobbs said in a statement. “With this Executive Order, I am taking action where the federal government won’t. But we can’t stand alone, Arizona needs resources and manpower to reopen the Lukeville crossing, manage the flow of migrants, and maintain a secure, orderly and humane border. Despite continued requests for assistance, the Biden administration has refused to deliver desperately needed resources to Arizona’s border.”
Hobbs urged the Biden administration earlier this month to deploy troops under federal orders. Presently, around 2,500 National Guard members are on federal active duty orders at the southern border, with 243 of them already deployed in the Tucson Sector, she emphasized, according to the Washington Examiner.
Hobbs’ administration has launched Operation Secure, in which the military will support and augment the state’s Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement “relating to violations of the law of this State, such as fentanyl interdiction, analytical support, and human trafficking enforcement, in the southern border region,” the executive order said.