White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that President Joe Biden “has done the work” to secure the southern U.S. border, even as rising numbers of migrants continue to surge across it.
Jean-Pierre was answering a question in the White House briefing room about the imminent end of Title 42, the rule that allows U.S. authorities to turn away migrants due to the pandemic emergency. It is one of the only enforcement tools that the Biden administration has retained, after President Biden issued a slew of executive orders upon taking office that rescinded President Donald Trump’s policies, including the border wall project.
More than 1,000 migrants cross the border from Mexico to El Paso Sunday night. (Video Screenshot/El Paso Matters)
“What Americans should know is that the president has done the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border since Day One,” Jean-Pierre said. She claimed that Biden had “secured record funding” for border security, and the previous administration had “gutted” the immigration system.
She also accused Republicans of harming border security by refusing to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” to legalize illegal aliens.
President Biden refused to visit the border on a trip to Arizona last week, explaining that “there are more important things going on.” He has never made a formal visit to the border in half a century of political life.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.