Speaker Johnson on Biden, “Americans have lost faith in this President..”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has asked President Joe Biden and the White House to avoid using any “election year gimmicks” in any actions taken to address the ongoing illegal migrant crisis that Republicans have blamed on the president since his term began.
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According to various reports, after weeks of the White House saying the president had done all he could unilaterally on the border, Biden is looking at potential action to restrict migrants’ ability to seek asylum in the U.S.
Johnson has been asking Biden for months to make use of his executive authority to improve border conditions, including a December letter urging him to “immediately take executive actions available to you under existing immigration laws to stem the record tide of illegal immigration.”
Johnson questioned Biden’s efforts following rumors this week that he is thinking about taking action.
In a report, Johnson stated that the proposal would have been “dead on arrival” in the House. Additionally, the administration is considering tightening screening standards.
“Now, in an election year, after the president has surrendered the border to cartels and smugglers, after tens of thousands of Americans have tragically lost their lives due to fentanyl poisoning, after countless unaccompanied minors and young people have been subjected to human trafficking, and after millions of illegal aliens have been scattered by the Biden administration throughout our country — the President suddenly seems interested in trying to make a change using the legal authority that he claimed until recently didn’t exist,” Speaker Johnson said in a statement.
“Americans have lost faith in this president and won’t be fooled by election year gimmicks that don’t secure the border. Nor will they forget that the President created this catastrophe and, until now, has refused to use his executive power to fix it,” Speaker Johnson noted.
The speaker expressed displeasure at reports suggesting Biden is now considering utilizing Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The provision grants the president the authority to bar entry to individuals considered “detrimental” to U.S. interests to “regain operational control of the border.” It comes after the president previously asserted that he had exhausted all available measures to secure the border.
“These reports also underscore just how brazenly and intentionally President Biden misled the public when he claimed he had done everything in his power to secure the border. Specifically, the President’s alleged desire to invoke Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which the White House dismissed using for months, is particularly telling,” Johnson said.
The Daily Wire added:
Johnson sent a letter to Biden in December encouraging the president to consider a number of options under existing law in lieu of an immediate legislative solution after the Senate refused to consider a House-passed border security bill. The list included ending catch-and-release, stopping the “exploitation” of parole authority, reviving asylum cooperation agreements with Mexico, ramping up “expedited” removal of migrants who fail to qualify for asylum, and renewing construction of a border wall. The speaker raised a couple of familiar suggestions on Thursday.
“If these reports are true and the President intends to take action, he can show he’s serious by changing more than asylum policy. He should begin by reinstating the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy and ending his administration’s abuse of the parole system, along with other critical reforms,” Johnson noted.
In a news statement to The Hill, White House spokesman Andrew Bates countered: “The only consistent theme in Speaker Johnson’s wildly fluctuating excuses for opposing bipartisan border security legislation — and for continuing to side with fentanyl traffickers instead of the Border Patrol — is that he is playing politics with the wellbeing of American families.”
But that said, the Senate legislation that Johnson declared DOA that the White House and Democrats backed would still have allowed up to 5,000 migrants illegally into the country per day before any border closure ‘trigger’ would have come into effect, according to reports.
Johnson and conservative members of the House have maintained that President Biden already possesses the necessary authority to address many of the issues at the border through executive orders.
Some of those executive actions could include simply reinstating several of then-President Trump’s immigration and border security policies.
Critics from both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns about Biden’s handling of the border. They point to the record number of encounters with migrants since 2021 as evidence of mismanagement. In December 2023, there were more than 300,000 encounters with migrants at the southern border, setting a new single-month record.
“The increased rhetoric from Johnson and the White House comes amid polls that show immigration is top of mind to voters with the 2024 presidential election underway. In a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released last month, 35 percent of respondents said immigration was their top concern, followed by inflation at 32 percent.” says a report on The Hill.
