Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and a handful of other GOP lawmakers have announced they will refuse to support any budget bill that does not include funding for a border wall.
In a letter sent last week to other senators, the lawmakers note that “partisan” funding bills floated by Senate Democrats “fail to provide America’s border agents with the proper security infrastructure necessary to defend America’s southern border from the continued crisis of unrestrained illegal migration.”
The lack of such resources “is a continuation of the Biden-Harris Administration’ s inability and unwillingness to acknowledge the humanitarian and national security risks created by its open-border policies,” they added.
They then note they will “withhold support” for any fiscal year 2022 budget plan “that fails to appropriately fund our nation’s border security.”
The GOP senators pointed out that former President Donald Trump “took the security vulnerabilities posed by a porous southern border seriously.” Trump declared the situation at the border a national emergency and maintained that until the day he left office, an effort to stop not only illegal immigration to stem the flow of drugs and criminals into the country.
But on his first day, President Joe Biden reversed that, as well as other border-control policies, including the construction of the wall, and the consequences have been dire for confronting the national security crisis along the Mexican border, the Republicans argue.
“The results of President Biden’s open-borders policy are stark,” they wrote.
Since Biden was sworn in, they note, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that more than 1.3 million migrants have been encountered at the southern border, an increase of 377 percent from the prior year.
Congress, they added, appropriated nearly $6 billion towards the construction of a wall, including $1.4 billion in last fiscal year’s budget. Yet the Democrats dropped this from their 2022 spending proposal.
“Instead. the proposals took steps in the wrong direction,” the senators noted. Democrats not only gutted the Border Patrol’s budget by $500 million, but they also pushed for the removal of parts of the wall already built.
“This funding is omitted despite significant evidence that a physical barrier is a critical tool for America’s border security agents to combat illegal migration, drug smuggling, and human trafficking,” the senators maintained, adding that the Department of Homeland Security reported that the border wall reduced illegal immigration by 87 percent in certain sectors, and in San Diego actually saved the government $28 million in salaries because of the reduced manpower requirements.
“The continuation of border security funding, particularly continued funding for physical barrier construction, remains necessary during the continued immigration crisis,” the Republicans concluded.
“As such, and in the defense of our nation, we will not offer support for any fiscal year 2022 omnibus agreement that omits this funding or authorizes the administration to remove previously constructed border security measures.”
In addition to Rubio, the letter was signed by Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
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