Pete Ricketts: “I rise today to join my colleagues in talking about the catastrophe at our southern border, what has happened under this…”

“I rise today to join my colleagues in talking about the catastrophe at our southern border, what has happened under this Biden administration, how it was created by Joe Biden because of his policies. This self-inflicted wound has been created by Joe Biden and his policies. Let's step back a little bit to see: How did we get here? How did we get to this situation where we have a flood of illegal immigrants coming across our southern border? As my colleague from Wisconsin just described, under the Trump administration, President Trump brought the crossings of illegal immigrants to a 45-year low, less than 1,000 encounters per day. He did that with the same tools that President Biden has available to him today. But instead of taking the same policies that President Trump used to control that border, President Biden was in a rush to undo those policies. He promised a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that are in this country. He promised to stop ``locking people up.'' He said: For those who come seeking asylum, we should immediately have a passage to absorb them and keep them safe until they can be heard. And he said those who cross the border illegally ``should not be the focus of deportation.'' Well, certainly on that last point, President Biden has been accurate. If you look at the September numbers, there were about 270,000 contacts along our southern border and only about 10 percent of those folks were deported.…”