Jeh Johnson: Biden Must Acknowledge Border ‘Emergency’ and Raise Asylum Bar, Remove People Quickly

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson stated that if he was in the Biden administration he would say that the border “is a crisis,” because it is, “very much so,” and that not only does the standard for asylum on the front end need to be raised, there should be more expeditious removal of migrants to where they came.

Johnson said, “Wolf, this is, in fact, a situation that is unsustainable. 10,000, 12,000 a day taxes resources, not just of the Border Patrol, not just communities along the southern border, but in the interior, in places like New York and Chicago. And so, we’re in a crisis, very much so, right now. I guess if I were in the Biden administration right now, Wolf, I would be saying to the American public, we are on this, we recognize this is a huge problem, we recognize this is a crisis, and we will work with Congress to add more authorities to address an emergency situation like this to more expeditiously remove people back to where they came from, all the while remaining humane, consistent with our values, being fair, being humane. But we have to address this crisis, raising the standard for asylum on the front end, for example, perhaps considering some sort of emergency authority like Title 42 to deal with numbers of this volume. But the President, in my opinion, needs to really say directly to the American public, I recognize the problem, I’m on this, my administration is doing everything we can to address it, including working with Republicans in Congress.”

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