By the Republican National Committee

THE WORST MONTH AT THE BORDER ON RECORD 

• Trying to hide just how bad the crisis at the border has become, the Biden administration released December border numbers in a late Friday night news dump.
• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows 251,487 illegal immigrants were apprehended attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in December, making this the highest total for December in DHS history.
  • That is a 366 percent increase from the average number of November apprehensions during the Trump administration.
  • 12,298 unaccompanied childrenwere apprehended.
  • At least 38 people on the terror watchlist have been apprehended trying to enter the U.S. between ports of entry so far this fiscal year, including 17 in December.
  • 170,512 illegal immigrantswere apprehended from countries outside the Northern Triangle and Mexico, showing that Biden’s crisis is global.
• 5.6 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since Biden took office.
  • This includes the more than 5 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection has apprehended and the 1.1 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.
  • Despite this ongoing crisis, Kamala Harris still claims “we have a secure border.”
• Biden has installed a de facto amnesty program in which nearly 50,000 illegal immigrants have had their cases dismissed in court due to his administration’s failure to file the proper paperwork.
• 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.

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.
  • 2,414 pounds of deadly fentanyl and 10,308 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in December 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 November is the equivalent of more than 547 million lethal doses.  
• Deadly rainbow fentanyl, which is designed by cartels to target children and teens, has been increasingly caught crossing the border and is now in at least 26 states.
  • Agents have also recently seen a rise in “speckled” or tie-dye fentanyl.
  • Six out of every 10 tablets analyzed by the DEA contains a lethal dose of fentanyl.
• 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.
  • Of the record 107,000 fatal drug overdoses in 2021, two-thirds involved fentanyl – on average, one person in the U.S. dies from a fentanyl overdose every seven minutes.
• The DEA seized more than double the amount of fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills in 2022 than it seized in 2021.
• In just the first three months of FY 2023, the Nogales, Arizona port of entry has already seized more fentanyl than the entire previous fiscal year, which was a record year.

BIDEN IGNORES THE SOUTHERN BORDER AS HIS HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE WORSENS

• Only after two years of intense criticism did Biden finally relent and go to the border for a “tightly controlled visit” criticized as nothing more than a “dog and pony show.”
  • Biden previously said the crisis wasn’t worthy of his attention, saying there are “more important things” than visiting the southern border.
  • Ahead of Biden’s visit, El Paso cleared the streets of makeshift homeless camps to maintain optics rather than address the reality of the border crisis.
• Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents are left demoralized and “beyond frustrated” by the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis.
• Despite Biden’s promise of a “fair and humane immigration system,” his open border policies aren’t compassionate; they are deadly.
  • Earlier this month in southern New Mexico, a suspected human smuggler shot a Border Patrol agent in the chest in an attempt to get away, later rolling the car in a crash and leaving two others severely injured.
  • Two weeks ago in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, two died and eight others were injured in a rollover crash, with the vehicle suspected to be involved in a human smuggling operation.
  • Last week near Eagle Pass, Texas, nine illegal immigrants were found locked in a rail car, all suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion.
• Unaccompanied children have become a “painfully common sight” at the southern border, with three young girls – aged one, six, and nine years old – recently found abandoned near the Rio Grande.
• Sex offenders are also coming across the border, with Border Patrol arresting four convicted sex offenders – three of which whose records involve minors – in just the first week of January.

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

• Biden’s failed policies have created the crisis at the southern border.
  • In Biden’s first 100 days he took more than 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting construction of the border wall and ending the successful “Remain in Mexico” policy.
  • 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.”
  • Meanwhile, a new training video from ICE reveals the Biden administration lost at least 150,000 illegal immigrants during the summer of 2021.
• With the border left wide open, fears are mounting that dangerous cartel inmates part of a recent Mexican prison break will take advantage and flee into the U.S.
• It’s not just Biden; 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.
• A recent Los Angeles Times/YouGov poll found that more Americans oppose Biden’s immigration policies than support them.

Originally posted here.