“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said the judicial system is “the enemy” of the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kilmeade said the courts have drawn a wedge in the government’s push to secure the border as border agents continue to witness a record-high surge of apprehensions throughout President Joe Biden’s administration. He went down the list mentioning the Supreme Court’s dismissal of former President Donald Trump’s administration’s request to withhold government funding for sanctuary cities in 2021 and a federal judge’s ruling Thursday barring Texas officials from cracking down on illegal entries.
“The court’s are the enemy of the border in so many ways,” Kilmeade said. “Remember, they wouldn’t let the former President of the United States [Donald Trump] stop the sanctuary city status, and then yesterday, that Texas law that would allow them to deport people that came across their border illegally, that got reversed. Now they gotta appeal it across the latter. It’s gonna end up in the Supreme Court — should a state have the right to protect the border, even though it’s the federal government’s responsibly.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation, Senate Bill 4, in December intending to penalize illegal reentries into the U.S. by sentencing them up to 20 years in prison and order them to return to their country of origin. It additionally created a ten-year minimum sentence for human smuggling. Another bill, Senate Bill 3, was meant to allocate $1.54 billion to the construction of a border barrier.
Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas ruled that if Senate Bill 4 was allowed to stand, it’s “effect would moot the uniform regulation of immigration throughout the country and force the federal government to navigate a patchwork of inconsistent regulations.” (RELATED: ‘Fox & Friends’ Segment Heats Up As Host Lawrence Jones Argues With Network’s Own Reporter)
In late January, the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of President Joe Biden’s administration by allowing them to remove razor wire put in place on the border by Texas officials. The White House doubled down on this policy by arguing the wire prevented Border Patrol officials from effectively doing their jobs.
Kilmeade further raged at the illegal immigration occurring at the U.S.-Canadian border, where agents arrested a group of Chinese nationals Thursday trying to smuggle their way into Maine, Fox News reported.
“But I’m just saying that the courts are not helping our security,” he continued.
The Biden administration witnessed record-high surges in migrant apprehensions at the southern border since the reversal of the Trump administration’s policies, notably the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Apprehensions exceeded 2 million in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, and apprehensions reached a record-high of over 300,000 in December 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection.
Illegal immigrants have been arrested in connection with heinous crimes in recent months, including the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant, according to officials. Another Salvadoran illegal immigrant arrested in connection with previous crimes has been charged with first and second-degree murder of a toddler, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox 5.