FACT CHECK: Biden Touts Success at Southern Border During State of Union Speech
Virginia Allen /
President Joe Biden touted his policies at the southern border Tuesday night during his second State of the Union address.
“We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers and seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months,” Biden said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that it seized just over 14,000 pounds of fentanyl in fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 30, and more than 7,000 pounds between October and the end of December.
In February, CBP reported a large drug seizure in the San Diego sector, including “blue pills” that contained “fentanyl with a total weight of 250 pounds with an estimated street value of $3,412,000.”
Under President Donald Trump in fiscal year 2018, Customs and Border Protection reported seizing 2,135 pounds of fentanyl. And in 2020, it seized nearly 5,000 pounds of the lethal drug.
“Most illicit fentanyl today is manufactured in Mexico and brought across our southern border,” Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, and Virginia Krieger,
president of Lost Voices of Fentanyl, recently wrote. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“But the Biden administration and the Left remain fully committed to their open border policies—even though opioids, largely fentanyl, are now the No. 1 killer of Americans aged 18-45 years old,” Krieger and Ries wrote.
The increase in the amount of fentanyl flooding into America is accompanied by a record number of illegal migrants crossing the southern border. Fiscal year 2022 saw 2.76 million illegal immigrant border crossings.
Biden drew groans and jeers from some Republican lawmakers Tuesday night when he said at another point: “America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts. If you won’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform, at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border.”
Ron Vitiello, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Daily Signal on Monday that agents are overwhelmed by the border crisis. Vitiello said there is a mental health crisis among Border Patrol agents because of the stress and frustration caused by the Biden administration’s “self-inflicted crisis” at the southern border.
In response to the border crisis, Biden outlined a plan in January to limit the number of illegal immigrants crossing into America. The plan aims at limiting unlawful migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela to 30,000 per month.
“Since we launched our new border plan last month, unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97%,” Biden said during his speech Tuesday night.
With a record number of encounters at the border and fentanyl flowing across, Tom Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said in a recent statement:
Congress needs to hold Joe Biden, [Homeland Secretary] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas, and everyone else responsible for this travesty accountable for what they’ve done to this nation.
This administration’s policies are dangerous and inhumane, and the new majority in Congress better get serious about doing something to stop them. We are quickly running out of time to fix this—act now, show some spine, or demonstrate that you care about border security to the same extent the Left does.
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