We're already spending more money on the border, and it's getting worse

 President Joe Biden's position on the disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border is that it is the result of Congress failing to do its job. He, Biden, didn't create the problem; instead, it was Congress, by which Biden means Republicans, who have neglected a terrible situation.

That is pretty much the opposite of the truth. The flow of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States has skyrocketed under Biden. Last month, Border Patrol officers encountered about 10,000 people a day crossing illegally into the U.S. Back in the Obama years, when Biden was vice president, 1,000 a day was considered a crisis. Now, it's 10 times that.

The current catastrophe resulted from one act: Upon taking office, Biden signaled to the world that if you enter the United States illegally, you will be allowed to stay. Since then, millions have come — lowest estimate 6 million, and perhaps many more than that — and only a small portion has been turned away. That has created an enormous magnet to draw immigrants, nearly all of whom do not have a legitimate claim of asylum. It is a problem entirely of Biden's creation.

Biden blames much of the influx on poverty. Yes, lots of people in the poorer parts of the world would like to come to the U.S. for more money and a better life. But that has been true for a long time. What changed in January 2021 was that Biden opened the door — come, and you can stay.

Instead of recognizing what he has done, Biden has blamed Congress. The president, along with Hill Democrats and their allies in the press, all argue that if Congress would just spend more money on the border — Biden is currently asking for about $14 billion in new, supplemental spending — then the problem could be solved, or at least lessened.

On the other side, Capitol Hill Republicans know that most of the $14 billion, were Congress to approve it, would go to accommodating and facilitating the current flow of illegal crossers, and then relocating them all around the U.S. That would only increase the incentive for more millions to come. It would be precisely the wrong thing to do.

"What the White House is proposing is more money to process and allow more illegals into the country," House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week on CNN during a visit to the border. "We need to do the opposite of that ... Listen to the deputy chief of U.S. Border Patrol who was with us last night, and he told us in his own words, he said, 'It's as if I'm at an open fire hydrant. I don't need more buckets to dump the water. I need to turn the flow off.'"

Now, Johnson and his fellow House Republicans have prepared a report on how much money has already been spent on the border during the Biden years. The spending has been going up, up, up, and it just brings more illegal border crossers. "Congress has appropriated more funds, always beyond President Biden's budget requests, and seen record crossings at the border," the report says.

Look at the numbers. In fiscal 2021, according to the report, Congress appropriated $4.869 billion for Border Patrol operations and southwest border surge funding. In fiscal 2022, that figure grew to $6.235 billion. In fiscal 2023, it grew to $7.153 billion. Altogether, that is a 47% increase in funding for the border during the Biden years. During that same time, the report notes, monthly encounters with illegal crossers at the border have grown from 163,043 in fiscal 2021 to 230,549 in fiscal 2022 to 266,762 in fiscal 2023. That is a 63% increase. And so far, in fiscal 2024, the number has jumped again, to 308,933.

Biden wants even more money. Of the $14 billion request, House Republicans say, "much of it falls within the parameters of managing the crisis — processing tents, medical services, consumables, etc. — that have little to do with actual border security and interior enforcement and more to do with processing illegal immigration into the interior as fast as possible."

The problem seems clear: The president of the United States has to stop the flow. He could do that by not allowing those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of illegal crossers to remain in the U.S. He does not need to go around and find people who have been in the U.S. for 20 years and deport them. He needs to return illegal crossers to Mexico before they have spent 24 hours in the U.S. If they have an asylum claim to make, they can wait in Mexico while it is processed. If Biden were to do that, and he has the full authority to do so, word would get out very, very quickly, and the current firehose flow would become a trickle.

But so far, the president has refused to act. He just wants more money to continue on his current disastrous course. And he has Democrats and many in the media seemingly on his side. When Johnson visited the border and did an interview with CNN, he was asked: "You're at the border today, and I presume you're seeing a very dire situation, hardworking border agents who can't do their jobs with what they have. They need more money. They need more colleagues. They need more beds for asylum-seekers. They need more funding. How come the House has not yet touched this $14 billion supplemental request from the Biden administration?"\

What do to when faced with such a question? Keep trying to explain what is really happening. But Republicans control just one part of the government, the House, and that by the barest of majorities. Democrats control the White House and the Senate. As head of the executive branch, the president has the power to enforce the law, and apparently, if he chooses, not to enforce the law. It's hard to imagine the border disaster improving unless Biden either changes his mind or leaves office.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/gop-spending-border-getting-worse