By the Republican National Committee

BORDER CZAR HARRIS FAILED TO SECURE THE BORDER

• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows 104,116 illegal immigrants were encountered attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in July.
  • For 39 months of Kamala Harris being border czar, monthly encounters surpassed even the highest month under the Trump administration.
  • Harris and Biden have yet to reverse their policies that created this crisis in the first place.
  • Rather than secure the border, the Harris-Biden administration has instead worked to conceal the true number of illegal immigrants allowed in by funneling them through Ports of Entry.
    • Those entering the United States through Ports of Entry using the CBP One app are excluded from the total number of illegal immigrants reported by CBP.
  • On day one, President Trump will seal the border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. 
• With roughly 3,350 daily encounters, this dwarfs the definition of a “crisis” set by Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson when he said in 2019 that “more than 1,000” encounters a day “overwhelms the system.”
• July’s 104,000-plus encounters is a 122 percent increase from the average number of July apprehensions during the Trump administration.
  • 6,323 unaccompanied children were encountered.
  • 53,860 illegal immigrants were encountered from countries outside the Northern Triangle and Mexico, showing that Biden’s crisis is global.
  • At least 98 people on the terror watchlist have been encountered trying to enter the U.S. between ports of entry this fiscal year.
• 10.1 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since Harris and Biden took office.
  • This includes the 8.2 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered and the more than1.9 million gotaways that have escaped past Border Patrol into the U.S.
  • Border officials say that the official number of gotaways vastly undercounts the illegal immigrants who make it into the U.S. 
  • Gotaways have exploded under the Biden administration compared to the Trump and Obama years.
• More illegal immigrants have been encountered at our nation’s borders under Harris and Biden than all two-term presidents.

HARRIS AND BIDEN ARE LEGALIZING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

• Since day one, Harris and Biden have sought to legalize illegal immigration.
• Harris and Biden announced a mass amnesty policy to shield half a million illegal immigrants from deportation.
• Harris and Biden unveiled a toothless executive order that allows thousands of unvetted illegal immigrants to enter the United States every day.
  • Harris and Biden’s DHS Secretary assured that the empty executive order won’t stop illegal immigration – just facilitate a more expedited and orderly entry for millions of unvetted illegal immigrants from all over the world.
  • The Harris-Biden order will fast-pass the entry of even more illegal immigrants into the country by simply routing them to ports of entry — where they’ll be processed and released into the country to await adjudication years from now. 
• Harris and Biden installed a de facto amnesty program in which 200,000 deportation cases have been thrown out due to his administration’s failure to file the proper paperwork in time.
• Harris and Biden unilaterally paroled over a million illegal immigrants using a 1950s law in an “unprecedented” way.
• An average of 5,000 illegal immigrants are being released into the U.S. every day.
  • In FY 2023 alone, more than 900,000 illegal immigrants were released into the interior of the U.S. and now await future immigration court dates.
  • Experts say the likelihood U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will remove them is “virtually nonexistent” and that they “are here indefinitely, if not forever.”
  • The Harris-Biden Department of Homeland Security admitted that more than 40 percent of catch and release migrants have totally disappeared.
• The Harris-Biden administration lost track of at least 150,000 illegal immigrants during the summer of 2021.
• The Harris-Biden administration has failed to remove 99.7 percent of the illegal immigrants released into the interior of the U.S.

DRUGS ARE POURING OVER THE BORDER INTO OUR COMMUNITIES

• Illicit drugs are flowing into the country at an alarming rate, with only 5 to 10 percent being intercepted as border officials struggle to contain the smuggling.
  • 2,732 pounds of deadly fentanyl and 9,069 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in July alone, with much more getting through.
  • Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: “If they’re seizing a lot, it’s because a lot is coming in.”
  • The amount of fentanyl seized in July is the equivalent of roughly 619 million lethal doses.
    • Since Harris and Biden took office, roughly 32.4 tons of fentanyl have crossed the southern border, enough to kill roughly 14.7 billion people.
• Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45, with the number killed by the drug up 94 percent since 2019.
  • 112,000 fatal drug overdoses occurred in 2023, a new record high.
  • On average, one person in the U.S. now dies from a fentanyl overdose every seven minutes.
  • The DEA seized a record 77 million fentanyl pills and more than 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in 2023, enough to kill every American.
  • According to Harris and Biden’s own DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, cartels are “killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we’ve never seen before.”

HARRIS’ OPEN BORDER HAS BROKEN RECORD AFTER RECORD

• FY 2023 saw nearly 2.5 million encounters, surpassing last year’s record.
  • The Harris-Biden administration has now set the all-time record for migrant encounters at the southern border for the last three years in a row.
• 169 people on the terror watchlist were encountered at the southern border in FY 2023, breaking the all-time record of 98 set last year.
  • More people on the FBI terror watchlist have been arrested at the southern border this fiscal year than the previous six years combined.
• More than 15,000 non-U.S. citizens with criminal convictions were encountered at the southern border in FY 2023, a record high. 
• Harris’ border crisis is so bad, CBP has needed to adjust the y-axis on the illegal encounters graph five times.

HARRIS’ DEADLY BORDER CRISIS CONTINUES TO WORSEN

• Despite the administration’s promise of a “fair and humane immigration system,” Harris’ open border policies aren’t compassionate; they are deadly. In just the past month:
  • A Peruvian gang leader wanted in his home country for 23 murders was arrested in New York after border patrol initially released him into the United States.
  • A Haitian illegal immigrant was arrested for allegedly raping a pregnant woman at a Massachusetts migrant motel.
  • A Mexican illegal immigrant was arrested for allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy twice in Mississippi.
  • A Columbian illegal immigrant facing 18 years in prison for homicide was captured in Maryland after border patrol initially released him into the United States in 2022. 
• At least 2,297 people have died attempting to cross the southern border under three years of Biden, more than double the number that died under the entire previous administration.
• Tens of thousands of migrant children who have come to the U.S. are being exploited and forced into de facto “indentured servitude.”
  • The Harris-Biden Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lost track of 85,000 children after responding to Biden’s demands to “move the children quickly out of shelters” by rolling back important vetting and safeguard procedures.
• Criminals are flooding across the border, with law enforcement arresting illegal immigrants accused of sexual abuse of a child, homicide, robbery, rape, credit card fraud, and more all within the past month.
  • Border Patrol has arrested 14,700 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions and 446 gang members so far in FY 2024.
• Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents have been left demoralized and “overwhelmed” by the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis.
  • This year alone, there have been more than 460 assaults on our brave Border Patrol agents.
  • None of the more than a dozen Border Patrol agents questioned said they would cast a ballot for Harris because they do not view her as supportive of the organization.
• Homeland Security Investigations estimates that Mexican cartels are now making $13 billion a year smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S., 26 times what they made in 2018.

HARRIS, BIDEN, AND DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS ARE TO BLAME FOR THE BORDER CRISIS

• The Harris-Biden administration’s failed policies have created the crisis at the southern border.
  • In the first 100 days, the Harris-Biden administration took more than 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting construction of the border wall and ending the successful “Remain in Mexico” policy.
  • By the three-year mark, the Harris-Biden administration had taken 535 executive actions related to immigration.
  • The Harris-Biden FY 2025 budget proposal calls for eliminating $50 million in border wall funding.
  • Illegal immigrants have confirmed this: “The border is open…everybody believes that the border is open. It’s open because we enter. We come in, free, no problem…We came illegally.”
• Harris has never spoken with either of the past two Border Patrol chiefs.
  • Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens said Harris has not spoken with him since he was appointed in July 2023.
  • Retired Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Harris had not spoken with him during his tenure from August 2021 through June 2023.
• Democrats in Congress have consistently voted for policies that make the border and country less secure.
  • Democrats aided sanctuary cities and sent stimulus checks to illegal immigrants, opposed legislation to fund Title 42, and repeatedly voted against funding the border wall.
  • Democrats voted against hiring more border agents, deporting felons, preventing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes from becoming permanent residents — and voted against strengthening the successful Remain in Mexico policy.
  • Democrats voted against funding for counternarcotic operations and ensuring the enforcement of immigration laws at the border.
  • Democrats voted against ensuring all local and state law enforcement are permitted to cooperate with federal immigration officials to track illegal immigrants.
• Harris’ record-setting border crisis is costing U.S. taxpayers approximately $150.7 billion each year.

Originally posted here.