Hearing Wrap Up: Biden-Harris Border Crisis Costs Every U.S. Community - United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability

WASHINGTON—The Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs today held a hearing on “The Border Crisis: The Cost of Chaos” to examine the price Americans are paying for the Biden-Harris Administration’s open borders policies and failure to secure the southwest border.

Key Takeaways:

The Biden-Harris Administration has facilitated the worst border crisis in American history.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s deliberate policy choices led to this crisis. These policies destroyed border security, encouraging millions of illegal aliens to enter the country unlawfully, including terrorists and criminals, and deteriorated the legal immigration system.

Chris Clem, the former Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma Sector, stated, “According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there have been more than 10.5 million illegal entry encounters nationwide, with more than 8.5 million of those encounters at the southwest border since the beginning of FY2021. By comparison, CBP recorded around 3.1 million such encounters nationwide from FY2017-2020. Just this fiscal year alone, there have been 2,597,784 nationwide encounters by CBP … The current apprehension and release policy, a practice that allows individuals who are caught crossing the border illegally to be released into the United States while they await their immigration court hearings, is a threat to our local safety and to national security.”

The Biden-Harris border crisis has created a public safety and national security crisis.

Americans have been murdered, raped, burglarized, and violently assaulted by illegal aliens who should not be free to roam the country. Every single crime committed by illegal aliens should have never happened in the first place. Beyond these preventable crimes, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been victimized by fentanyl smuggled across the porous southwest border under the Biden-Harris Administration.

Chris Clem, the former Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma Sector, stated, “Among those crossing our borders, there are also criminals and members of terrorist organizations who have the intent of harming Americans and destroying our way of life. Since January 2021, almost 400 illegal immigrants from 36 different countries have entered the country who appear on the U.S. government’s Terrorist Screening Database and many have been released by the Department of Homeland Security into American communities … Innocent Americans have been targeted by criminals who have illegally entered our nation. This includes those who committed the brutal murder of Laken Riley in Georgia, and the heinous rape and murder of Rachel Morin in Maryland. Especially horrific was the crime involving an innocent 12-year-old girl named Jocelyn Nungaray, who was raped and murdered in Houston, Texas. All these crimes were perpetrated by individuals who had illegally entered our country, several of whom were previously apprehended by the CBP and then later released back into our country.”

The Biden-Harris border crisis has economic consequences for Americans.

Almost all recently added jobs are going to the foreign-born population. Illegal aliens are a fiscal strain on the taxpayer and communities through costs of incarceration, costs of education for the children of illegal aliens, social service programs, and uninsured use of the healthcare system. Estimates show “that 59.4 percent of illegal immigrant households use one or more welfare programs.”

Dr. Steven Camarota, Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies, stated, “Adding millions of people to the country through immigration drives up the cost of housing and reduces affordability relative to wages in areas of heavy settlement. Fiscally, illegal immigrants are a net drain — they create more in costs than they pay in taxes … Illegal immigration also increases the supply of labor impacting the wages and employment of some American workers, often the poorest and least educated.”

The Biden-Harris Administration should implement deterrent-focused policies to end its self-inflicted border crisis.

Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) stated, “The Biden-Harris Administration has all the tools it needs now to end this crisis. For example, it can reinstate the Trump Administration’s policies that worked, such as Remain in Mexico and the detention—rather than the mass release—of illegal aliens. They could continue to build the wall, which a Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent told us is a “force multiplier” in their mission to secure the border.”

Member Highlights:

Subcommittee Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) discussed how the Biden-Harris border crisis has real economic costs for American taxpayers and workers.

Rep. Grothman: “President Biden and Vice President Harris have allowed in seven million illegal immigrants since they first took office. Does this abrupt introduction of seven million illegal immigrants strain public services and represent a fiscal challenge?”

Dr. Camarota: “Yes, and it’s not because illegal immigrants are lazy and don’t want to work, or because they are on welfare. People in a modern economy, including native-born [Americans,] who don’t have a lot of education, and that represents the vast majority of illegal immigrants, don’t make much money in this economy and don’t pay many taxes even if they have work authorization, and they tend to use a lot of services, especially when they have U.S. born children.”

[…]

Rep. Grothman: “Are [illegal immigrants] taking jobs that would otherwise go to American workers?”

Dr. Camarota: “By increasing the supply of workers, they certainly make employers happy, but that tends to have a downward pressure on wages making jobs less attractive. And the real crisis in the U.S. labor market is all these people of working age who aren’t working or looking for work … It’s a six-decade increase. It’s a social disaster.”

Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) discussed how the Biden-Harris border crisis has created a national security crisis.

Mr. Clem: “Less than a tenth of a mile from there border there were several IEDs and RPGs [found]. More than likely that is for cartel infighting, such as taking over land and using it to embolden their operations. Being that close to the U.S. border that is a threat to everyone in the region. It doesn’t take much for someone to put an IED or RPG at the border and injure a CBP agent. Border security is national security.”

[…]

Rep. Gosar: “When you were chief, how many people were on the terrorist watch list?

Mr. Clem: “I actually led the nation in 2022 with 40 people that were apprehended that came across the Terrorist Screening Database.”

Rep. Gosar: “And those are the ones you just knew about, right?”

Mr. Clem: “Those are the ones we just knew about, yes sir.”

Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) explained how the historic Biden-Harris border crisis is unsustainable.

Rep. Biggs: “Jeh Johnson, Obama’s DHS Secretary, said if you have more than 1,000 migrants a day, you have a crisis. Mr. Clem, is that a crisis? You’ve been there.”

Mr. Clem: “In 2020, it was approximately 8,800 arrests in Yuma. In 2021, it went up to 114,000. And then in 2022, it went up to 312,000. We went over a thousand a day in just Yuma alone.”

Rep. Biggs: “If you are standing on top of Mt. Everest and you come down a thousand feet, it may look like you’ve descended a lot but you ain’t descended to normal. And we are nowhere near normal. And that’s the lie about the statistics that the Democrats are rallying around.”

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