Border Patrol agents reacted furiously to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union claim that he could keep the border secure as illegal immigrants use it as a turnstile
“Folks, if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure our border and fix the immigration system,” Biden said during his address to the nation on Tuesday. “And as you might guess, I think we can do both.”
Fox News spoke to Border Patrol agents, whose names were not used, and found deep skepticism about the president’s commitment to the former.
“Very few people within [Customs and Border Protection] believe this administration will actually secure the border, they just do not believe in it,” one agent said.
“All of their actions, comments and practices are solely about pushing in as many illegal aliens as possible, not just those from the Americas but from around the world,” the agent said.
“We all know he doesn’t care about secure borders,” another agent said.
The 2021 federal fiscal year ended with 1.7 million encounters between agents and illegal immigrants, according to Fox News. In January of that year, there were 153,941 migrant encounters, almost double the 78,414 of January 2021, during which the Trump administration left office.
The agents who spoke to the outlet derided the president, with one calling the address “pandering 101.”
“I laughed,” said another.
One said he did not watch, knowing the speech would be “all lies and smoke. … We’re losing so many agents, they’re fed up.”
Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf called Biden’s brief verbal pit stop on the border crisis “lip service.”
“Nothing more. No vision, no strategy,” Wolf said in a tweet on Tuesday night. “Just a wish list and another hollow push for immigration reform legislation.
“I think the President may have forgotten he has authority to fix the crisis NOW.”
That mention of border and immigration security was lip service. Nothing more. No vision, no strategy. Just a wish list and another hollow push for immigration reform legislation. I think the President may have forgotten he has authority to fix the crisis NOW.
— Chad Wolf (@ChadFWolf) March 2, 2022
One agent who spoke to Fox News wasn’t impressed with Biden’s boast of “putting in place dedicated immigration judges in significant larger number” to speed asylum cases.
“Immigration judges usually tend to follow the tendencies or intentions of their appointing administration,” he said. “That means I and many other agents have little faith in them to actually follow immigration law.”
“The vast majority of these illegal aliens have no legitimate claims to asylum, but administration-picked and taxpayer-funded lawyers will argue otherwise,” the agent said. “Unemployment, inability to buy groceries, domestic violence, bad schools and bad weather are not legitimate claims, period.”
Jody Jones, whose brother, Rocky, was killed by an illegal immigrant in 2018, also condemned the speech, according to Fox News.
“It’s the worst it has ever been down there in history,” Jones said. “In the history of the United States, the border crisis is the worst ever. … It’s apparent. Everybody knows it.
“They keep throwing smoke and mirrors at us and trying to tell us that … everything’s good, everything’s getting better, and it’s not.”
Jones said the result of Biden’s lax approach to illegal immigration is that “other families are going to are going to suffer … there’s going to be other lives lost.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
