by Anthony Gockowski
Rep. Jim Hagedorn slammed President Joe Biden’s “America last” policies after visiting the southern border last week.
“It’s like they flipped a switch and they had open borders. Before you know it, catch-and-release is back and people are literally, for all intents and purposes, being invited to the border because they know they’re going to be processed and then sent deep into the United States, and given a lot of free things as they go,” Hagedorn told Newsmax.
The Minnesota congressman joined a delegation from the House Border Security Caucus for a tour of the border last week.
“Unbelievably, President Biden and Vice President Harris refuse to visit the border to address the crisis they created. Sadly, they are putting America and the American people last,” Hagedorn said before the trip.
Migrant encounters reached a 20-year high of 178,622 in April, up from the record of 172,000 set in March. According to The Center Square, an estimated 42,000 additional migrants evaded Border Patrol agents and entered the general population in April.
A recent Washington Post report said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out the lowest number of deportations on record in April. Shockingly, ICE’s 6,000 officers are averaging one arrest every two months, according to the report.
Hagedorn claimed that people with criminal records, who would have been turned away by the Trump administration, are now being processed and allowed into the country.
“Look, there are people in the United States that aren’t supposed to be here. A federal judge in more than a million instances has ruled that people need to be deported. That’s a million folks that are roaming around with a deportation order. ICE needs to be able to do its job. But President Biden and the Democrats, they don’t want that to happen,” he said.
The second-term representative from southern Minnesota said, “We have America first on one side and America last on the other.”
“We need a person in the executive branch like we had with President Trump who has the will to defend our country and protect the people,” he added.
The congressman also criticized Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now trying to distance herself from the border crisis after facing weeks of criticism for failing to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. She was tasked with overseeing the administration’s response to Central American immigration in March.
“We didn’t run into Vice President Harris down at the border, I can tell you that. I think she and the president don’t want to go down there, see it with their own eyes, talk to the people on the ground like the border patrol agents because the agents are going to tell them the wall works, complete the wall. They’re going to tell them that this catch-and-release is really bad policy,” Hagedorn told ABC 6 News. “This is a crisis of Joe Biden’s making.”
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Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and reported for The Daily Caller.
