We’re being invaded! More than one million people from about 140 different countries have illegally entered the United State of America since January. The southern border is a disaster in every way.
Under policies of the current administration, the border crisis worsens every month. In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended about 73,000 people entering illegally; in July, the number was 212,672. The total of counted illegal entries in the first seven months of 2021 is more than 1.2 million. Additionally, CBP officers at ports of entry are reckoning with another 15,000 to 30,000 unapprehended unauthorized migrants each month, according to estimates by Acting Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz.
The statutory priority mission of the CPB’s Border Patrol is to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States and ensuring the security of our nation at America’s borders and ports of entry. This priority cannot be fulfilled when officers are overrun by increasing monthly numbers of apprehensions.
Public safety is the primary role of government. It is why We the People consent to a plan of governance. By reopening our southern border, the administration has failed to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” as required in the U.S. Constitution Article II, Section 3. On March 20, 2021, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration policy that paused deportations.
The American people are not happy with the current open borders policies, according to a June 30 report on polling by Harvard/Harris. It found that 80% say illegal immigration is a “serious issue,” and 55% say Biden should have left Trump’s policies in place. Surprisingly, the same poll also found that 71% of Americans grossly underestimate the size and severity of the crisis.
In addition to the humanitarian crisis of more than a million people being uprooted and arriving in need of housing, health care and many other services, the open border is strengthening international cartels. The Center for Renewing America issued a policy brief in July reporting the cartels are “now earning nearly $14 million a day [for] moving people illegally across the southern border” and raking in billions of dollars every year “off the pain, suffering and abuse of migrants.”
And while CBP agents are busy apprehending migrants, Mexican cartels use sophisticated surveillance equipment to enable entry of illegal drugs into America at nearby border openings, primarily meth and fentanyl produced by Chinese cartels, which are then transported on interstate highways across the country. In Montana, Kyler Nerison, state Department of Justice communications director, said that “all the meth being trafficked into Montana is coming from Mexican drug cartels, which have affiliates operating in our state,” and he concluded: “The increase in meth is a primary cause of much of the violent crime in Montana.” He also announced an “alarming increase of fentanyl-related fatalities in Montana,” as reported by the state crime lab, trending upward from 19 in 2019, to 41 in 2020, and 22 just through May 2021.
And a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration threat assessment in March 2021 stated that “most illegal drugs and narcotics enter the U.S. through the southern border,” and that “violent international drug cartels are making billions of dollars.” At the end of April, the DEA reported that federal agents seized 6,494 pounds of fentanyl the first four months of 2021 compared with 4,776 pounds in all of 2020.
Historically in America, citizenship has been expanded steadily and granted incrementally to all races, religions and groups of people. Under Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, Congress is “to establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization,” and the first naturalization act was passed by Congress on March 26, 1790.
In 1986, amnesty for nearly 3 million non-citizens was codified in the Immigration Reform and Control Act signed by then-President Ronald Reagan. Congress later reneged on construction of the border wall described in that bill. No responsible immigration legislation has been passed by Congress since, primarily because a majority of Washington D.C. politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, either want new voters or take large contributions from many major corporations and wealthy globalists who want more cheap labor.
As Stephen Dinan reported in The Washington Times on July 21, “So, we the majority of taxpaying people, regardless of party, are right back where we have been for two generations, fuming and increasingly suffering the repercussions of an open border in suppressed wages, higher taxes and impacts on our healthcare, education and community services.”
If we really are concerned by these historically high numbers of people and drugs illegally entering the U.S., then we will contact our state and federal officials to insist that border wall construction be completed and that border control be achieved and maintained. Construction costs could be paid for with savings from migrant care costs and the $3 million per day currently spent on contractors hired to guard steel and concrete left lying along the border when border construction was halted, per a report from Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford.
Further, we need to urge our representatives in Congress to pass targeted bills fixing specific problems with our immigration system. No more omnibus bills like in 1986 that allow for payoffs, trade-offs and middle-of-the night lobbyist surprises.
We also must oppose this administration’s push for mass amnesty of many millions of people who illegally entered the U.S. since 1986, through budget reconciliation scheduled for next month with only 51 Senate votes. To get more information on these complex issues, one option is a report from the Center for Renewing America at https://americarenewing.com/issues/policy-brief-a-comprehensive-overview-of-the-crisis-at-the-u-s-southern-border/.
As always, I am grateful and blessed to call Montana home.
Hamman, a Clancy resident, serves on the state Board of Public Education and is former deputy director of the Montana Governor’s Office of Budget and Program Planning.
