By the Republican National Committee

THE BORDER CRISIS IS GETTING WORSE

• New data shows 211,401 illegal immigrants were apprehended attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in April.
  • That makes last month the second highest total for April in 22 years.
• For the first time in history, monthly apprehensions at the southern border have surpassed 150,000 for 26 consecutive months.
  • Under the previous administration, monthly apprehensions never reached 150,000.
• With roughly 7,000 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” apprehensions a day “overwhelms the system.”
• April’s 211,000-plus encounters is a 337 percent increase from the average number of April apprehensions from 2017-2020.
  • 11,478 unaccompanied children were apprehended.
  • 113,319 illegal immigrants were apprehended from countries outside the Northern Triangle and Mexico, showing that Biden’s crisis is global.
  • At least 96 people on the terror watchlist have been apprehended trying to enter the U.S. between ports of entry so far this fiscal year.
    • 16 of those 96 were apprehended in April alone, meaning that single month saw more people on the terror watchlist arrested than fiscal years ‘17 through '20 combined.
• There have been more than 6.6 million illegal border crossings since Biden took office.
  • This includes the 5.2 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has apprehended and the 1.4 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.
• Biden has installed a de facto amnesty program in which over 75,000 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.
  • 3,236 pounds of deadly fentanyl and 5,568 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in April 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 April is the equivalent of more than 734 million lethal doses.
• 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 110,000 fatal drug overdoses in 2022, two-thirds involved fentanyl; on average, one person in the U.S. now dies from a fentanyl overdose every seven minutes.
  • According to Biden’s own DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, cartels are “killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we’ve never seen before.”
  • Since Biden took office, nearly 19 tons of fentanyl have crossed the southern border, enough to kill 8.6 billion people.

BIDEN IGNORES THE SOUTHERN BORDER AS HIS HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE WORSENS

• Despite Biden’s promise of a “fair and humane immigration system,” his open border policies aren’t compassionate; they are deadly.
• At the beginning of this month, Border Patrol discovered 45 illegal immigrants packed inside a 35 degree refrigerated trailer surrounded by rotting produce.
• Last month, a pickup truck carrying 12 illegal immigrants rolled over during a high-speed chase – with seven managing to get away. 
• Tens of thousands of migrant children who have come to the U.S. are being exploited and forced into de facto “indentured servitude.”
  • Biden’s 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 Border Patrol arresting illegal immigrants accused of aggravated battery, murder, and sexual assault of a minor all within the past month.
• Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents have been left demoralized and “overwhelmed” by the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis.

BIDEN’S TITLE 42 DISASTER

• With Title 42 ending, the Biden administration has been wholly unprepared for a surge in illegal immigration.
  • Even before the end of Title 42, Border Patrol officials reported that their facilities were already “at capacity.”
  • Biden’s only solution, which has since been blocked by a federal judge, has been to mass release illegal immigrants into border communities.
• Even Democrats are finally starting to speak out on Biden’s border crisis now that it has reached their backyards.
  • Kathy Hochul (D-NY) says New York City is “bursting at the seams” with illegal immigrants, warning “you’re gonna start seeing people living in tents – not just on the border, but on the streets of New York.”
  • Asked “where the heck” is Biden regarding this crisis, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said “that is a good question.”
• Meanwhile, Biden and “border czar” Kamala Harris are nowhere to be seen on the crisis, with each only having visited the border once since taking office.

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.”
• The Biden administration lost track of at least 150,000 illegal immigrants during the summer of 2021.
• 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.
• Biden’s response to how things are going at the border: laughter.

Originally posted here.