Lawmakers probe Biden admin’s ‘colossal failure’ at securing border in hopes crisis ‘will never be repeated’

The Biden administration created the “worst border crisis in U.S. history,” a congressman warned on Tuesday, and Congress must take action to ensure past border failures will “never be repeated.”

The House Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement held a hearing aimed at examining “the actions that gave rise to the historic border crisis we witnessed the last four years,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Mississippi, said. “And more importantly, this hearing will enable Congress to explore potential legislative solutions to ensure that the United States does not endure another such crisis.”

The hearing, titled “Part 1: Consequences of Failure: How Biden’s Policies Fueled the Border Crisis,” included testimony from experts from The Heritage Foundation, Texas Public Policy Foundation, National Border Patrol Council and American Immigration Council. 

When former President Joe Biden was sworn in four years ago he immediately “issued executive orders dismantling years of robust border security measures implemented by the first Trump administration,” Guest said, adding that the results of Biden’s actions “can only be described as a colossal failure.” 

“We have often heard the phrase, ‘those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.’ So to be clear, this hearing is not about looking back just for the sake of looking back, but instead is about learning from past failures so that Congress can work together to pass meaningful and lasting solutions to secure our border,” he said. 

The Biden administration implemented “sweeping” changes that included “rapid processing” of migrants and “release over enforcement,” Guest said, effectively dismantling border policies that had been meant to deter illegal crossings. Under Biden, he added, illegal crossings reached “record levels,” transnational crime surged, and mass parole programs were abused to incentivize influxes in migration. 

“As a result, every state in America has now become a border state,” he said. Guest said that the Trump administration “wasted no time” in addressing the border crisis by declaring a national emergency at the southern border, deploying troops, resuming border wall construction, and ending mass parole programs. By the end of February, illegal migrant crossings plummeted 94% compared to the previous year, he said.  

“The bottom line is, this did not have to happen, and we need to prevent it from happening again,” Guest said.  

Democrats accused the subcommittee of being stuck in the past and ignoring present-day immigration issues. “We’re looking at the past,” the subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Lou Correa, D-California, said. “President Biden is gone, and let’s focus today on the nuts and bolts of border security.”  

Other Democrats, such as Texas Rep. Julie Johnson, agreed that the border situation was “a mess” but said it has been a problem spanning multiple presidential administrations and over decades.  

“We would all be fooling ourselves if we said this is all on the Biden administration,” she said.  

The Biden administration’s policies directly enabled and encouraged illegal immigration by giving aliens “five things that they want,” Heritage Foundation border security expert Lora Ries testified. She said illegal immigrants typically want to “enter our country, remain here, work here, send money home, and bring or have family here.” 

She added that the Biden administration encouraged millions to apply for asylum while the media referred to most migrants as “asylum seekers” to generate “American empathy.” 

“Knowing many were coming here for economic reasons, not because they were fleeing persecution, the administration was encouraging asylum fraud,” she said. The executive branch also paid tens of billions of dollars to non-governmental organizations to support mass migration: “We the U.S. taxpayers were paying for our own national destruction,” Ries said.  

When asked how to ensure that future administrations don’t repeat these mistakes, she said that “Congress needs to step in and codify many of the changes that are necessary.” 

“We shouldn’t be going back and forth president to president via executive order,” she said. 

Senior fellow at Texas Public Policy Foundation Ammon Blair said that during the last four years, Americans have “endured a deliberately orchestrated invasion through weaponized mass migration of millions of illegal aliens from over 170 countries.” 

The crisis was more than a border failure, he said, adding that it was a full spectrum national security failure manufactured by the Biden administration.”