Former Trump administration officials say President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “have blood on their hands” following the deaths of 48 border crossers this week.
On Monday, sources close to Breitbart News detailed the deaths of 48 border crossers, including teenagers, found inside a tractor-trailer in an apparent human smuggling operation near San Antonio, Texas. Another 16 border crossers were found in the tractor-trailer and taken to nearby hospitals.
At least 60 border crossers were packed into the tractor-trailer, the source said.
In response, former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan and former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan said, “Biden and Mayorkas have blood on their hands.”
Alonzo Rangel, left, funeral director of Funeraria Del Angel, and Brooks County Deputy Raul Narvaez, 31, load the remains of deceased female migrant, Rosario Yanira Girón de Orellana, 40, of El Salvador, found on a ranch in Brooks County, to be transported to the Brooks County Sheriff’s office portable morgue on Friday, June 4, 2021 in Falfurrias, Texas. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Migrants and members of the Coalicion Pro Defensa del Migrante paint numbers by year of dead migrants on the border fence polls during a performance to raise awareness on the numbers of migrants dead on the border on Day of the Dead at the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on November 2, 2021. (GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images)
“Their open-borders policies are driving record numbers of migrant deaths, not to mention record numbers of American deaths from fentanyl poisonings,” Morgan and Homan said in a joint statement. Both are visiting fellows at the Heritage Foundation.
“I know what it is like to stand in the back of a tractor-trailer with 19 dead migrants at my feet, including a 5-year-old boy that suffocated to death in 170-degree heat in a steel box in total blackness,” Homan said. “It changed me forever. This tragedy is worse.”
Morgan said:
The Biden administration has told lie after lie about creating a ‘safe, orderly, and humane’ process. We’ve known that’s a lie from the beginning but how better to understand than looking at the bodies of 46 dead migrants, including 4 innocent kids? [Emphasis added]
This administration is responsible for untold suffering and death, and it’s all been needless. They know full well the costs of their open borders policies but are pursuing them anyway — all for political benefit and pursuit of their personal ideology. It’s disgusting. How many more Americans and migrants have to die before we say enough is enough and demand the Biden administration take back our borders from the cartels? [Emphasis added]
U.S. Border Patrol agent Matthew Mercado, Rio Grande Valley Sector, Alonzo Rangel, center, funeral director of Funeraria Del Angel, and Brooks County deputy Raul Narvaez, 31, load into an SUV the remains of deceased male migrant, Alfonso Nieto Valladares, 25, of Honduras, on a ranch in Brooks County on Thursday, June 3, 2021 in Encino, Texas. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Homan, likewise, blamed Biden’s pro-mass migration efforts for the continuing rise of migrant deaths.
“I have been warning for a year that a tragedy was going to occur because of the increase in truck smuggling, together with open borders, catch-and-release, and no chance of being deported, the most vulnerable people in the world will put themselves in the hands of criminal cartels to seek the promise that Biden and Mayorkas have made,” Homan said:
How is open borders and the policies of this administration humane? The most humane thing we can do is secure the border and stop catch and release. That will immediately decrease the crossings and the number of deaths. That is a fact. [Emphasis added]
On Tuesday, the White House suggested the border is “closed” despite the migrant deaths. Since Biden took office, more than 700 border crossers have died attempting to cross the nation’s borders.
In 2021, alone, the Biden administration set a new record as at least 650 border crossers died trying to cross U.S. borders — the highest rate of deaths since the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began tracking the figure in 2014.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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