A former pollster for former President Bill Clinton said Friday that the Biden administration was scrambling to “clean” up the chaos on the “porous” southern border before the 2024 election.
“Well, look, obviously whether it’s open or closed, it’s porous,” Mark Penn, chairman of the Harris Poll, told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. “People are pouring through the border and I think the American public knows that. That’s why there’s about a 60% disapproval of the administration’s policy. It’s why it’s after the economy, the number one issue.” (RELATED: ‘Working To Pay Back The Cartels’: Former GOP Rep Rips Biden Over Missing Migrant Children)
The Biden administration said Jan. 31 it would end of the use of Title 42, a public-health measure used by the Trump administration to expel illegal immigrants, on May 11. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas predicted during testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee at an April 18 hearing that there would be a surge of migrants after Title 42 expired.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Friday that migrant processing centers in seven sectors on the southern border are over capacity less than a week before the end of Title 42. The Biden administration announced Tuesday that the Department of Defense plans to deploy 1,500 active-duty troops from the United States Army to bolster CBP, who will join 2,500 from the National Guard that are already supporting CBP due to the end of the use of the Trump-era expulsion policy.
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“What you’re seeing here with the sending of troops, with the secretary showing up and holding availabilities, you’re seeing the administration beginning to recognize, wow, this is a serious issue, better clean this up by election time,” Penn said. “And they’re putting – whether or not they’re taking real moves or fake moves or the Congress comes in, it’s a big issue, they know it now and they cannot leave the status quo and they know they could be overwhelmed with the end of 42 and they are going to take the brunt of this, no question about it.”
Over 1.2 million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border during fiscal year 2023, according to data released by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), following 2,378,944 encounters in fiscal year 2022 and 1,734,686 in fiscal year 2021. Another 600,000 migrants evaded CBP in fiscal year 2022, Fox News reported.
CBP encountered 458,088 illegal migrants in fiscal year 2020, the last full year of the Trump administration.
“I wish the American people would hold the administration more accountable,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said. “They’ll only react if they’re held accountable at the polls and in the mid-terms, the administration got the wrong message that it was okay, no big deal. I think we’re paying that price right now.”
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