Biden and Ossoff are not taking immigration seriously

Jesse Petrea
| For Savannah’s Morning News

This comment comes from Georgia Representative Jesse Petrea (Savannah)

President Joe Biden’s recent executive order on illegal immigration is a political stunt and an attempt to defraud the American people ahead of the November elections. It’s too little, too late when the president only claims to support border security when he’s trailing in the polls in an election year. In the first 100 days of his term, the president issued 94 executive orders dismantling border security and rejecting immigration enforcement tools put in place by President Donald Trump.

President Biden was handed arguably the most secure border in history, and then he deliberately opened it. He has argued for more than three years that he needs new rules to control immigration and ensure homeland security, after the world watched President Trump effectively solve the problem with the rules already in place.

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The president’s plan does nothing to slow the current migration wave. First, it continues the catch-and-release that allowed accused murderer Laken Riley to enter the country. Second, it allows 900,000 additional migrants to cross the border illegally. He will not deport any of the nearly 8 million to 10 million illegal aliens Biden has admitted to the United States over the past three years.

While President Biden’s acknowledgment that he has the power to stop border crossings via executive order (which he has always known about because previous presidents have exercised it) is progress, he refuses to stop the flow in a meaningful way.

It is obvious that this administration advocates open borders and ignores real homeland security. Under 8 U.S. C1182(f), the President has the authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens in the event that the President determines that the entry of any alien or any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff recently visited the border in an attempt to fool Georgians into thinking Democratic leaders support border security. They do not. They simply change their tune as the election approaches because they finally understand that voters are angry about losing control of our border. The Biden administration has failed miserably to protect the U.S. border by systematically dismantling policies and regulations in place that kept illegal immigration levels at record lows. Ossoff’s weak approach would do nothing to stop illegal border crossings.

If Ossoff wants to promote true homeland security, he should press the president to use the inherent power of the White House to stem the tide of illegal entry with the following reforms: end the catch-and-release program, restore the remainder of the Mexican policy, and begin deporting criminal aliens on previous levels. Only then will we give credence to claims that Democrats want border security.