President Joe Biden told a Spanish-language media platform in an interview on Tuesday that his administration is looking into whether he has the authority to close the border.
He added that it’s not clear whether he could shut it down without legislation.
“And some have suggested I should go ahead and try it,” President Biden said. “And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court.”
RNC Research—the research and rapid response team of the Republican National Committee—criticized President Biden in a post on X, stating that questions over his authority weren’t an issue when he attempted to cancel student loans, “or when he opened the border via executive order.”
Mr. Acevedo brought up President Biden’s criticism of Republicans for failing to work with Democrats in closing the border by coming to an acceptable negotiation over the border security bill, and the Democrats’ criticism of President Biden for departing from his open border policy.
“Well, first of all, the first piece of legislation I introduced as president was related to the border,” he said. “The first one. I wanted to make sure everything from Dreamers had a path to citizenship, all the way to providing for enough border security people to orderly handle the border, to allow legal immigration and prevent illegal immigration.”
Now, he said, there aren’t enough officers to process and discern illegal immigrants crossing the border.
Trump’s Border Policy
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told The Epoch Times that all President Biden has to do is look at the executive actions of President Trump regarding the border, including utilizing Title 42 to halt entry.Still, President Biden, who revoked Trump-era legislation tightening border security on the first day of his presidency, blamed the former president for influencing the failure to come to an agreement between Republicans and Democrats on border security.
“And when—this is literally the truth—what happened was when Trump found out that I liked it and I supported it, and I‘d get, quote, credit for it, he got on the phone, not a joke, checked with the Republicans and called them and said, ’don’t be for it, will benefit Biden,'” he said. “It was a good piece of legislation, and I’m not giving up on it.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a press conference that since President Biden stepped into the White House, he “began to open that border wide.”
Mr. Johnson said the House would be voting to denounce the Biden administration’s border policies.
“Every American should be paying attention to how their representative votes on that,” he said.
The Biden administration has sent a message of welcome to the entire world, including terrorists, violent criminals, and foreign nationals who are “coming here to do us harm,” Mr. Johnson said.
“The official number is about 9 million people have been encountered at that Southern border just in the last three years,” he said. “But we all know, and I think intuitively we understand, the number is much much higher than that because we don’t have any idea how many people actually have come across totally undetected.”
Mr. Johnson estimated the real number to be 16 million.
“Where are they? What are they plotting? What are they doing? We would suspect that there are terrorist cells set up now,” he said.
“From Day one, the Administration has always evaluated what actions could be taken. There haven’t been any final decisions regarding what additional executive actions, if any, could be taken,” the official said. “As we do in all cases, the Administration explores a series of policy options, that does not mean any particular policy option will ultimately come to pass.”
