WASHINGTON — With Congress gone for the year with no border deal, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Thursday sent a scathing letter to President Joe Biden, blaming him for the border crisis and urging him to take a number of executive actions “to stem the record tide of illegal immigration.”
Those executive actions, Johnson said, include ending the policy allowing Customs and Border Protection to release migrants without court dates, and “turnback or detain all aliens encountered between ports of entry”; restricting parole, which allows the president to temporarily admit some migrants; and pursuing agreements with third countries like Canada to take those seeking asylum in the U.S.
Johnson also urged Biden to resume construction of the border wall.
“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,” Johnson wrote. “Statutory reforms designed to restore operational control at our southern border must be enacted, but the crisis at our southern border has deteriorated to such an extent that significant action can wait no longer.
“It must start now, and it must start with you,” the speaker said.
Johnson’s letter comes as recent video footage shows CBP being overwhelmed by migrants trying to cross the southern border with Mexico. A new record was set just this week when CBP apprehended more than 12,000 migrants in a single day on the southwest border, nearly 11,000 of whom are migrants who crossed the border illegally between ports of entry, Department of Homeland Security officials said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other Biden administration officials have been closely working with a trio of senators trying to negotiate a border agreement that’s needed to unlock aid for Ukraine and Israel. Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; James Lankford, R-Okla.; and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., held their final in-person talks in the Capitol on Wednesday, but they said they were making progress and that virtual negotiations would continue during the holiday break.
"Obviously we are part of these negotiations with the senators; we think it’s going in the right direction. We want to make sure we get to a bipartisan agreement," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her daily briefing Thursday. "The president understands, he understands that we have to fix this immigration system — it’s been broken for decades now.”
Jean-Pierre said she had not yet reviewed Johnson's letter but noted that the Biden administration had added 24,000 Border Patrol agents this year and is engaged in diplomatic talks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other leaders to deal with the surge of migrants.
"The president has done everything that he can, right, on his own," she said.
Responding directly to Johnson’s letter, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said House Republicans voted against Biden’s request for funding to hire more Border Patrol agents, pushed for a stopgap funding bill that would have cut 800 CBP agents, and failed to take up the president’s supplemental request in October that calls for more border security funding.
Jean-Pierre said she had no information about a potential one-on-one meeting between Biden and Johnson in the new year, or why that had not happened yet. Shortly after he was elected speaker in October, Johnson attended a meeting at the White House where the president stopped by. Aides to Biden and Johnson also have been in touch, Jean-Pierre said Thursday.
In his letter, copies of which were sent to Mayorkas and the three congressional leaders, Johnson said the border crisis “has caused unspeakable human tragedy for migrants and certainly for our own citizens.” He pointed to record amounts of fentanyl being seized at the border, saying that “fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18- 45.” And because criminals have illegally entered the U.S., the speaker said, “We are now more vulnerable to a terrorist attack on our homeland than ever.”
Johnson laid blame squarely at the feet of the president.
“All of this is the direct result of your administration’s policies,” he said. “You have clearly undermined America’s sovereignty and security by ending the Remain in Mexico policy, reinstating catch-and-release, suspending asylum cooperative agreements with other nations, revoking existing restraints on the abuse of parole, and halting border wall construction.”
