Poll: 75 Percent of Voters Disapprove of Kamala Harris’s Handling of Border Crisis
Majority of Democrats rate 'border czar's' performance 'poor'
Three-quarters of voters disapprove of Vice President Kamala Harris's handling of the southern border crisis, according to a nationwide poll.
President Joe Biden made Harris the "border czar" of his administration in March. Now, a majority of voters—75 percent—have rated her handling of the response "poor." The judgment did not change with political affiliation: Fifty-five percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans agree with that assessment. Slightly more Democrats participated in the poll than Republicans, and slightly more women participated than men. The poll, conducted by the Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group, surveyed more than 1,000 likely general election voters.
More than 1.5 million migrants have crossed the southern border in 2021, with some months marking decades-long highs in immigration. Following the first influx of migrants in March, Harris faced backlash for laughing off reporters' questions about the Biden administration's border response. During an interview in June with NBC's Lester Holt, she falsely claimed she had "been to the border." When Holt corrected her by noting she had not made a visit, Harris replied, "I—and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't—I don't understand the point that you're making."
Harris tried to recoup her lost public credibility and visited the border shortly after.
The Biden administration has struggled to stem the tide of increased immigration as it has conveyed a more permissive border stance and jettisoned Trump-era border policies. The administration gutted Title 42, which the former administration used to shut down the border during the coronavirus pandemic, and is trying to end the "Remain in Mexico" program, which keeps asylum seekers outside the United States until their court hearing. Biden reached the lowest job approval rating of his term—38 percent—on Wednesday, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll.
A majority of Americans polled by the Trafalgar Group in July also said Harris was not ready to be president. The Trafalgar Group is best known for accurately predicting the 2016 presidential election. The group inaccurately predicted the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.
Cartel Violence Spills Into US as Border Patrol Treats Gunshot Victims
Border Patrol agents are dealing not just with surging migrant populations but also with victims of cartel violence who are being treated in the United States for wounds sustained in Mexico.
Customs and Border Protection disclosed on Thursday that agents found five migrants outside the border town of Hidalgo, Texas, who required emergency medical treatment due to gunshot wounds that are suspected to have taken place in Mexico. Those migrants were sent to a local hospital and their condition remains unknown.
"This encounter serves as yet another reminder of the dangers migrants face when they place their well-being in the hands of smugglers who are only interested in turning a profit," Rio Grande Valley Sector chief patrol agent Brian S. Hastings said in a statement. "Smugglers routinely place migrants in dangerous situations where they are at risk of drowning, exposure to the elements, and assault."
Customs and Border Protection did not disclose the status of the six other migrants found in the group, nor whether the injured would be deported after their treatment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment.
News of the injured migrants comes as warfare between rival cartels in Mexico is putting both American civilians and military personnel at risk. Fox News reported gunfire flying over the head of Texas Army National Guard soldiers standing guard near the border late Thursday night.
"Soldiers told us there have been cartel gunfights in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, the Mexican city across from Roma, TX, frequently in recent days and weeks," journalist Bill Melugin tweeted on Friday. "The soldiers heard gunfire and explosions two days ago and showed us this video of smoke billowing after the gunfight."
Since the beginning of 2021, Border Patrol agents have arrested 325 gang members, a sharp decrease from previous years even as general apprehensions have skyrocketed. In 2019, the agency arrested 976 gang members and 808 in 2018. More than 150 of this year's gang-related arrests have been in the Rio Grande Valley, the sector that has seen the brunt of this year's migrant surge.
Meanwhile, fentanyl seizures in 2021 have nearly doubled compared with last year. By the end of July, CBP reported its agents confiscated 9,337 pounds of the narcotic.
Biden's $3.5 trillion spending bill gives migrants same child benefits as Americans
President Joe Biden’s budget includes a provision that provides billions of dollars in cash to illegal aliens with children.
The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill extends the Child Tax Credit to anyone in the United States who provides an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, overturning a crucial safeguard against fraud. Federal law required a valid Social Security number to receive the cash transfer from the federal government. The potential payout for illegal immigrants is massive, with each family receiving a monthly payment of $250 to $300 per child.
A survey from the Pew Research Center found that roughly 675,000 children are not eligible for a Social Security number, making the tax credit expansion for illegal aliens cost between $2.025 billion to $2.43 billion a year. Other estimates put the total number of illegal children residing in the United States at more than 800,000.
Families, regardless of their legal status, would be eligible to receive checks of $3,600 per year per child. The Democratic bill would amount to a universal basic income for parents residing in the country. Under U.S. law, illegal immigrants are barred from enjoying the benefits of federal entitlements.
Democrats are trying to advance an amnesty provision into the budget reconciliation bill, a process reserved for budgetary matters. Congressional Democrats have argued that granting legal status to millions of illegal aliens would add $139.6 billion to the budget deficit by 2032 due to their increased use of welfare programs. The Senate parliamentarian ruled in September that Democrats cannot include a road to citizenship for illegals in their bill, although party leaders have vowed to keep fighting for its inclusion.
Welfare policy expert Samuel Hammond said the potential payout for illegals under the expanded Child Tax Credit exceeds the per capita income of many migrants' home countries.
"Consider that the value of the CTC for an infant child is now $3,600 per year. That alone represents 40 percent of Colombia’s per capita income, and nearly 120 percent of Haiti’s. This is why countries with unconditional welfare benefits also tend to have relatively restrictive immigration laws," Hammond wrote in American Compass. "America’s historical openness to immigration, in contrast, has in large part been enabled by rules and program structures that minimize the fiscal cost of lower wage migrants."
The White House did not return a request for comment on the Child Tax Credit provision.
As the country faces a historic surge of migrants applying for asylum, the Biden administration risks compounding the crisis by offering a greater financial incentive to those willing to make the trip to the southern border. One 2015 study commissioned by the Institute of Labor Economics concluded that expanding Norway’s welfare benefits to poorer European countries generated "substantial (expected) costs for the welfare state" and a distorted labor market.
"For families with children, [the cash benefit] entails that a job in Norway may be attractive even if the offered wage is extremely low. For example, the Norwegian cash‐for‐care subsidy for a one‐year-old child now amounts to NOK 6,000 per month, which … corresponds to 629 Euros, or around 80 percent of average earnings in Poland," the researchers wrote. "Such features give employers and prospective immigrant employees incentives to agree on very low wages and poor working conditions."
Mayorkas Declares War on Immigration Enforcement
Homeland Security will no longer conduct raids on workplaces that employ illegal aliens
The Department of Homeland Security will no longer conduct raids on workplaces that employ illegal aliens, the latest effort from the White House to curtail the agency's mission to enforce immigration law.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at worksites could discourage illegal immigrants from reporting other unlawful employment practices in violation of a Biden administration directive. DHS will now privilege other investigations that "most effectively protect the American labor market," according to the memo released Tuesday.
"The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers," the memo says. "These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations."
Worksite raids increased by nearly 400 percent in 2018 under former president Donald Trump, leading to the arrest and deportation of thousands of illegal aliens. During former president Barack Obama’s last year in office, ICE made just 106 worksite arrests.
Proponents of the practice say worksite raids encourage employers to fill open jobs with law-abiding U.S. citizens and visa holders and regularly lead to broader investigations for other serious crimes. In 2018, the owner of a Tennessee slaughterhouse pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud following a worksite raid. He was later sentenced to 18 months in prison.
The largest single worksite raid in DHS history took place in 2019 at a Mississippi food processing plant and resulted in the arrest of 680 illegal aliens. Four Americans were also charged with violating immigration law.
Former immigration officials say the Biden administration will only encourage companies to abuse workers. Corporations will be able to hire illegal immigrants at substandard wages with impunity, according to former ICE chief of staff Jon Feere.
"Lawbreaking employers have benefited from the Biden administration’s lack of worksite enforcement this year, and now Mayorkas is outright abolishing this important enforcement tool," Feere said. "Media in Central America reported on ICE worksite operations under the Trump administration and that undoubtedly had the effect of discouraging illegal immigration."
The Mayorkas memo effectively restores Obama-era policies, which critics say hamstrung the agency from policing employers. By delegating the Department of Labor to be the chief investigator when an illegal alien files a worksite complaint, as Mayorkas’s memo orders, DHS is sidelined.
Under Obama, the Labor Department refused to share information about investigations with DHS, nor would it allow joint investigations with DHS. That practice ended most employer investigations by DHS, meaning lawbreaking employers often went unpunished. In his memo, Mayorkas calls for a review of whether E-Verify—a federal tool that allows businesses to check if a prospective employee is an illegal alien—is "not manipulated to suppress unauthorized workers from, or to punish unauthorized workers for, reporting unlawful labor practices such as substandard wages, unsafe working conditions, and other forms of worker exploitation."
Schumer Blasts Biden for Haitian Deportations
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is demanding that President Biden halt all deportations of Haitians who cross into Del Rio, Texas, from Mexico, just as the White House begins implementing its plan to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
"We cannot continue these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws," Schumer said at a Tuesday hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's policies. "We must allow asylum seekers to present their claims at our ports of entry and afforded due process. … Again, the policies that are being enacted now and the horrible treatment of these innocent people who come to the border must stop immediately."
The majority leader also called for the White House to end Title 42, which gives the Centers for Disease Control power to expel all migrants at the border during a pandemic. He said that sending Haitian migrants back to their home country "defies common sense."
Schumer's remarks come as the Biden administration faces a humanitarian crisis on the southern border as more than 10,000 migrants, mostly from Haiti, sit under a bridge in Del Rio. Homeland Security has committed to sending 400 Customs and Border Protection to the area to accelerate deportations and resettlements to other parts of the country.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said at a Monday press conference that Haitians without valid asylum claims will be immediately deported. He pushed back against the idea that the U.S. border is completely open.
"I want to make sure that it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States. That is false information," Mayorkas said. "Irregular migration poses a serious security risk to the migrants themselves. Trying to enter the United States illegally is not worth the tragedy, the money, or the effort."
July saw the most migrant encounters in more than two decades, and August saw a 317 percent increase compared with 2020. The record-breaking monthly numbers could translate to two million border crossings by the end of 2021.
While Schumer has called for the end of Title 42, Homeland Security officials who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon have called the policy a lifeline for the Biden administration as it struggles to get a hold on the border crisis. Although Biden carved out broad exemptions for migrant families and children, the ability to deport single men provides some relief for overwhelmed Border Patrol and Homeland Security agents.
A department inspector general's report released this month chastised the Biden administration's handling of the health risks associated with unfettered migration at the southern border. It noted that a lack of stringent COVID-19 testing puts the health of Americans who live in border towns at grave risk. The spread of disease among migrants in detention is compounded, according to the inspector general, by the Biden administration's "erosion of Title 42 authority."
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