by Senator Marsha Blackburn
550,000.
That is the estimated number of illegal aliens who will receive amnesty under President Biden’s latest executive action, which will make many of the migrants eligible for green cards, work permits, and a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
According to President Biden, this decision is “commonsense.” But to millions of Tennesseans and Americans, it is just the latest example of how the President is working to undermine the rule of law, devalue U.S. citizenship, and make illegal immigration legal.
In just his first 100 days in office, President Biden issued 94 executive orders to open our border, including halting construction of the southern border wall, ending the successful Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy, and pausing deportations. Since then, more than 10 million illegal aliens have entered our country — larger than the population of 38 states.
Despite the many harms of their open border agenda, President Biden and Democrats have championed it for a simple reason: to gain more seats in Congress. Thanks to a day-one executive order by President Biden, illegal aliens count toward the census population, which determines each state’s share of congressional seats. By taking in as many illegal aliens as possible, Democrat states can help offset the loss of hundreds of thousands of Americans who are fleeing blue jurisdictions for red states.
By granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegals, the Biden administration is building on this effort, setting the stage for illegal immigrants to potentially vote in future U.S. elections.
Last week, I wrote a letter to President Biden pointing out that his amnesty proposal is blatantly unconstitutional by side-stepping congressional authority to alter the legal status of hundreds of thousands of illegals. To be sure, I expect federal courts will deem President Biden’s action unlawful, much like President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals memorandum, which also extended deportation protections to illegal immigrants.
Still, while President Biden pushes ahead with his unconstitutional amnesty plan and open border agenda, the American people will be left to deal with the consequences — including a record surge in migrant crime.
Since October alone, U.S. authorities have apprehended 13,130 illegal aliens with prior criminal convictions — including homicide, burglary, assault, drug trafficking, and sexual offenses — up from 2,438 in fiscal year 2020, the last full year of the Trump administration. In 2023, that number was 15,267 — a more than five-fold increase from 2020.
Just last week, an illegal alien from Ecuador, who crossed the southern border in 2021, was arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl while wielding a machete in a park in Queens, New York.
Also last week, Houston police arrested two Venezuelan illegal aliens for kidnapping and strangling a 12-year-old girl before leaving her body in a bayou. The suspects allegedly committed the heinous crime just weeks after the Biden administration released them into our country after they illegally crossed the southern border.
And earlier this month, law enforcement arrested a Salvadoran illegal alien for raping and murdering a 37-year-old mother of five in Maryland. The suspect, who is also accused of murdering a woman in El Salvador and assaulting a 9-year-old girl and her mother in Los Angeles, crossed the southern border four times last year.
These horrific crimes would have never happened if President Biden secured our southern border. Instead, the President is more concerned about protecting illegal aliens than American citizens — with tragic consequences.
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Marsha Blackburn represents the people of Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.
Photo “Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden.
