Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake told Breitbart News Saturday that President Joe Biden has the power to crack down on the border without new legislation and that he and Democrats “created” the border crisis “by design.”
Lake joined host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau chief Matthew Boyle on the program over the weekend, where Lake contended the migrant crisis is a “manmade disaster made by one man, Joe Biden.”
“And Matt, it was on day one that I’m sure you remember, and your listeners as well, that Joe Biden came in and reversed the incredible border policies that President Trump had in place that were working here in Arizona,” Lake said. “We’ve never seen it more secure in Arizona than under President Trump, that border. It was very tight. It was pretty much closed down as best as we could. We were working on building the wall, and then Joe Biden reversed all those policies and opened it up and has done nothing to get it secure again. As a matter of fact, everything they have done has just made the problem worse.”
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Boyle and Lake also discussed the negotiations in the Senate that manifested into a pro-migration border bill released on Sunday night. Citing Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Boyle emphasized that Biden has taken more than 60 executive actions to “open up the border” and that if he wanted to, he could reverse course on all of these actions to shore up the border, even without a new law from Congress.
Lake agreed, noting that Biden could enact the “laws that are already there.”
“Go back to those executive orders – the laws that are already there – and secure the border,” Lake said. “President Trump could do this in a week or less but this is a … problem that was created by design by Joe Biden and the Democrats. And I hate to constantly do that and say, ‘Oh, it’s Joe Biden’s fault,’ but it is.”
But Lake finds that Democrats “love” problems and spending money on the “symptoms” of a particular issue without ever remedying it.
“They love to have the problem, and then they go back to D.C. and drum up billions of dollars to throw at the symptoms of the problem, but they never want to fix the problem,” Lake contended. “And I think that’s one of the reasons they hated President Trump: because he said, ‘Look at all these problems we have. We don’t need to have these problems for 20 years. We can fix them right now.’ And he showed us how to do it with that border. And they want the border open so they can throw $100 million here, $50 million there, another $1 million here into all of these different various programs to help process people and deal with the disaster that they’ve created.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the bill is “worse than expected” and would “be dead on arrival” if it ever made it to the House of Representatives. As Breitbart News has reported, the legislation would allow for 8,500 migrants to enter the U.S. daily without triggering the declaration of an emergency.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., then-candidate for speaker of the House, is seen outside a House Republican Conference election meeting in Longworth Building on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images).
Breitbart News’s Bradley Jaye wrote that the bill also “sets a finish line and a countdown clock for illegal aliens to achieve amnesty.” In other words:
[A]any illegal alien who makes it further than 100 miles from the border or evades capture for 14 days will not count towards the triggering of the declaration of an emergency, nor would they be subject to the additional enforcement mechanisms triggered — if Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas chooses — when that limit is reached.
Now, Senate Republicans are starting to voice opposition to and concerns about the bill, for which Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) was a lead GOP negotiator.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), was the first Senate Republican to voice opposition to the bill, as Breitbart News noted.
FLASHBACK — Sen Daines: We Stopped Building the Wall; Now We Put Signs Up Telling Illegals Where to Go
“I can’t support a bill that doesn’t secure the border, provides taxpayer funded lawyers to illegal immigrants and gives billions to radical open borders groups,” Daines posted early Monday morning on X.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement, “Now that I have seen text, I have questions and serious concerns.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.