10/15/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/15/2024 11:09
BUTLER COUNTY, IOWA - U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote Vice President Kamala Harris asking questions about the policy decisions she has made in her role overseeing border issues for the Biden administration, as well as the dangerous consequences and crimes that have ensued as a result.
"Every community is a border community because the Biden-Harris administration has refused to enforce our immigration laws," Grassley today said of his letter. "The federal government's number one job is to keep its citizens safe. By reversing the effective border security policies of the Trump administration, the Biden-Harris administration has done the very opposite of protecting American citizens."
Grassley on a radio call this morning cited the following actions, among others, the Biden-Harris administration has taken that have weakened U.S. national security and made innocent Americans targets of otherwise preventable crimes:
Click HERE for audio of Grassley discussing his letter to Vice President Harris. The full letter is available HERE and below.
Dear Vice President Harris:
In one of your first official public appearances, you joined President Biden in the Oval Office when he opined on the Trump administration's immigration and border policies. President Biden dismissed the previous administration's policies as "counterproductive to our security," "harmful," and a "moral and national shame."
Since your first day in office, you and President Biden have worked to dismantle the Trump-era border policies and halted further construction of the border wall. The presidential proclamation terminating construction read, in part: "It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall." This initiated a so-called "careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall." By April 2021, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced the cancellation of border barrier projects. In June of the same year, the Biden-Harris administration returned $2 billion to the DOD previously allocated for the purpose of border wall construction. Your administration also initiated a review of the Remain in Mexico policy, which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas subsequently ended in June 2021.
Meanwhile, every fiscal year throughout your engagements, crossings from Mexico and the
Northern Triangle markedly exceeded any year of the Trump administration. Despite the stark increase from those nations and many others, deportations and returns overall have decreased as a share of crossings.
Now, you are engaging in a numbers racket, telling Americans modest decreases in encounters from soaring, record highs is somehow proof that what your administration has been doing all along is working. It is not.
President Biden's executive order-more than three years after your administration's reckless reversal of key policies-is an implicit admission that he and you bear ultimate responsibility for this crisis and this disastrous approach. As a result of these slow-walked changes, our national security has been undermined and the safety of our communities has been threatened all across the country.
Due to the Biden-Harris administration's failure to achieve adequate border security, illegal immigrants, including those entering from Mexico and the Northern Triangle, have been able to perpetrate heinous acts against innocent American citizens. For example:
This is just a snapshot from this year alone of the sorts of preventable tragedies, which have become all too common across the United States.
The Biden-Harris administration's policies-pulling resources, reversing Remain in Mexico, and stopping wall construction-are largely to blame for our open and unsafe border over the last three-and-a-half years. Because of your actions and inactions, every state is now a border state and every community is a border community.
Given your role as the leader of engagement with this region, which the media has colloquially dubbed as "Border Czar" or "Root Causes Czar," I ask that you provide answers to the following immigration and border policy questions by October 24, 2024.
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