House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) blasted President Biden’s support for the Senate-backed U.S.-Mexico border agreement to reduce the number of encounters Customs and Border Protection (CBP) handles each day. He argued that the president could use executive action.
In the post of XJohnson, formerly known as Twitter, said Biden does not need to pass new legislation to address the situation at the southern border.
“President Biden falsely claimed yesterday that Congress would need to pass a new law to authorize the closure of our southern border, which he knows is not true,” Johnson said. Ta. “As I explained to him in a letter late last year and have reiterated with specificity many times since, he can and will take immediate executive action to reverse the catastrophe he has caused. You have to do that.”
Johnson went on to list several actions Biden could take.
“As I stated in my letter, President Biden will end catch-and-release, end the use of parole powers, reinstate the Remain in Mexico program, expand the use of expedited removal powers, and build a border wall. By reopening, we can begin to secure our borders,” Johnson continued. “The President must begin by using the broad legal powers he already has to restore our nation’s sovereignty and end the mass exodus of illegal aliens into our country.”
Johnson’s reaction follows Biden’s remarks on Friday in which he vowed to close the U.S.-Mexico border “in the event the border becomes overwhelmed” if a bipartisan border security bill passes Congress. It is.
“Let me be clear,” Biden said in a statement Friday. “What has been negotiated so far, if passed into law, would be the toughest and fairest reform to secure our borders ever in this country. “It would give me new emergency powers to shut down the bill. And if I were given that power, I would exercise it the same day I signed the bill.”
The border bill is currently being negotiated in the Senate, along with collateral funding for Ukraine and other U.S. allies. In a letter to his colleagues, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said if rumors about the border deal were true, the bill being negotiated would be “dysfunctional” in the Republican-led House of Commons.
The White House told Johnson that House Republicans must choose between finding a bipartisan solution or seizing “political talking points.”
“You House Republicans have a choice. They have to choose whether they want to solve the problem or actually solve the problem like the Senate is trying to do in a bipartisan way. Let’s get in the way and score political points,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday.
CBP confirmed that there were a total of 302,024 encounters at the U.S. southern border last December, setting a new record.
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