The change in border talk from Democrats isn’t motivated by national security, Republican U.S. Sen. John Thune writes, but rather their own political vulnerability.
Trailing in the polls and desperate less than six months before Election Day, President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are trying something new: their best impersonations of Republicans.
The architects of the Biden border crisis — the worst in American history — suddenly want the American people to know they’re on the case. After three-plus years of mismanaging border security, resulting in more than nine million entries through the southern border, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is telegraphing that he may force Senate floor votes related to the border.
That’s his prerogative as leader, but I don’t expect anyone to buy this political theater. For starters, Mr. Biden has authority to take action at the border and to do so today. It’s the same authority he used to issue a multitude of executive actions relaxing border security, including rescinding the national emergency at the southern border, halting border-wall construction, ending the Remain in Mexico policy, and discouraging Immigration and Customs Enforcement from apprehending illegal immigrants.
The president this month ordered the removal of criminals and potential terrorists. This is a switch from the policy he started shortly after his inauguration, and the new order was made only after hundreds of people on the terrorist watchlist were encountered in between ports of entry on his watch. Vote for me, and I’ll clean up the historic mess I made is hardly an effective campaign pitch, and a few meaningless Senate votes won’t erase my Democratic colleagues’ long records of enabling illegal immigration.
In this Congress alone, Senate Democrats have banded together to protect taxpayer-funded flights for illegal immigrants to different states in the U.S. and keep federal dollars flowing to sanctuary cities. Democrats blocked votes on a litany of common-sense border-security and enforcement measures, including a proposal from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) that would have let state and local law enforcement detain criminal illegal aliens until ICE can deport them. They even stopped legislation from Sen. Ted Budd (R., N.C.) that would deem assaulting a law-enforcement officer a deportable offense.
Not one Senate Democrat supported H.R. 2, House Republicans’ signature border bill, after Senate Republicans twice forced it to be considered.
But now Democrats need voters in Montana, Ohio, Nevada and Pennsylvania to believe they’re serious about the border. They aren’t motivated by national security. They’re concerned about their own political vulnerability. They’ve recognized, albeit too late, that the chaos of an open border is a political liability.