Republican Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs sent Friday a letter to President Joe Biden, demanding that his administration “immediately” roll back the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.
In the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, Biggs noted that since the beginning of Biden’s presidency, over 1.4 million illegal aliens had been encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the southern border, including 126,000 unaccompanied children.
“You must immediately either restart MPP or detain all illegal aliens subject to mandatory detention by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),” Biggs wrote, accusing the president’s “open-border policies” of causing the unprecedented influx of illegal migrants.
MPP, also known as former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, bars non-Mexican immigrants from immediately entering the U.S. interior after claiming asylum at the border. Instead, the policy mandates they wait in Mexico until their immigration court date in the U.S. (RELATED: Gov. Abbott Says Texas Is Fighting Back Against Biden Over ‘Open Border Policies’)
CBP released the latest numbers for border illegal alien encounters.
192,001 in September.
Totaling the Fiscal Year 2021 numbers to 1,734,686.
This is the highest level ever recorded.#BidensBorderCrisis
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) October 22, 2021
Biggs decried the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) late October announcement about the agency’s plans to once again terminate the MPP, despite an August ruling by U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Matthew Kacsmaryk that ordered the Biden administration to “enforce and implement MPP.”
“How much longer will President Biden prolong the open border crisis? The Biden administration’s continual efforts to terminate MPP is hurting our nation’s security and putting the American people at risk. MPP was one of the most effective tools in our arsenal to deter illegal immigration, and yet, President Biden has slow-walked its court-ordered reimplementation and again announced his intention to end it entirely,” the congressman told the Daily Caller.
“President Biden’s open border policies have fueled an unprecedented border crisis and encouraged hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to cross our border each month. President Biden must reinstate MPP immediately,” he added.