Democrat Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman criticized his own party on Monday for mishandling the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Fetterman said during a Fox Nation debate against Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick that he lost some support in his party for highlighting the importance of border security. He said that the record high border encounters recorded throughout former President Joe Biden’s administration was “unacceptable” and a risk to national security.
“If I had to find something in that big, beautiful bill that I could support, and that’s the mistake that our party made and that’s the border. I absolutely support those kinds of investments to make our border security as well now too,” Fetterman said. “Our party, that’s when I’ve lost some support in my party, I thought the border was really important. And our party did not handle the border appropriately. Look at the numbers, 260,000 [or] 300,000 people showing up at our border and we can all agree that’s roughly the size of Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania.] Now that’s unacceptable and that’s a national security issue and that’s chaos.”
The “big, beautiful bill,” a major spending package backed by President Donald Trump, devotes over $100 billion to border security and additional resources. The legislation intends to fund $46.5 billion to revive construction of the border wall, $4.1 billion to hire Border Patrol agents and an additional $1,000 fee for those filing to seek asylum.
During the Biden administration, border encounters exceeded 2 million in the 2022 and 2024 fiscal years, and rose above 3.2 million in the 2023 fiscal year, according to data provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Under Trump, border encounters reached levels that have not been seen since 1968, when there were only 62,640 reported encounters along all of the southwest sectors.
During Trump’s first full month of his second term, border apprehensions sunk to historically low levels in just his first month in office, when Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 8,347 illegal migrants. The number marked a 94% decrease from the 140,641 illegal migrants apprehended in February 2024, when Biden was still in office.
The Biden administration repeatedly said that they needed Congress to take action in order to secure the border. However, the Trump administration has had success taming the border without congressional aid so far.
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