Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) on Tuesday warned the United States “simple cannot go on like this as a country” after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released new data revealing federal immigration officials encountered more than 1.3 million encounters with illegal immigrants who would not ordinarily be allowed to enter the country.
Green, who chairs the House’s Homeland Security committee, made the remarks after CBP also announced it recorded more than 1.5 million illegal immigrant apprehensions at the southern border during the 2024 fiscal year.
While the country’s laws deem the illegal immigrants inadmissible, the press release from Green’s committee said the White House “encouraged would-be illegal border crossers to enter using a host of unlawful, mass-parole programs the Biden-Harris administration has schemed up.”
🚨NEW: @RepMarkGreen reacts to disastrous FY24 border numbers under the Biden-Harris administration: "We simply cannot go on like this as a country.”
Learn more: https://t.co/bZUyr8Nweb pic.twitter.com/ST0os1rM8M
— House Homeland GOP (@HomelandGOP) October 22, 2024
In his statement, Green accused President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their allies in the media of ignoring the data from CBP.
“You wouldn’t know it from the way President Biden, his ‘border czar,’ Vice President Harris, and their defenders in the media are talking about these numbers, but this was the second-worst year in terms of inadmissible alien encounters ever—only surpassed by the all-time record Biden and Harris set just last fiscal year,” said Green, adding the year was a “disaster” for official encounters.
Green said Americans now experience “consequences of the unchecked flow of inadmissible aliens into their communities,” on a daily basis, with the country now boasting “countless examples of those aliens going on to commit crimes against innocent Americans, and many of them create financial burdens for state and local governments who are already struggling to provide resources to their citizens.”
The Tennessee lawmaker added, “We simply cannot go on like this as a country. These open-borders policies have devastated our safety, security, and sovereignty. It’s time to return to policies that secured our border and our nation.”
Green criticized the Biden-Harris administration in a committee hearing last month when he argued the Democratic administration’s “open borders policies have undermined our safety and our security” and specifically referenced the Biden-Harris programs to allow inadmissible illegal immigrants to enter the country.
“This solves the terrible optics problem of overcrowded Border Patrol facilities and overwhelmed agents, but the end result is the same—tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens released into the interior every month. It’s just a shell game—a sleight of hand to skew the numbers,” said Green.
– – –
Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
