The Border Crisis: Effects of Policy Failures Extend Beyond Border Communities

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas will be testifying in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee this week, defending the Biden Administration’s $13.6 billion border supplemental request and the administration’s failed policies along our southern border. Mayorkas claims that the border security and immigration system is broken and that there is no ongoing crisis. These non-border communities across the country beg to differ.

1. Chicago has become so overrun with illegal aliens that they are now having to house them inside public institutions, such as the airport or police stations. 
2. A Honduran man, twice deported from the country but allowed back in, was recently charged with murdering two individuals in Nashville, Tennessee.
3. Left-wing mayors are speaking out about the disastrous results of illegal immigration on their communities.
4. New York City, a sanctuary city, has inherited nearly 150,000 illegal aliens during Biden’s short presidency.
   • This could cost taxpayers up to $12 billion by July 2025. The mayor told a news outlet that the city will spend more on migrants than it does on sanitation, parks, and the fire department combined.
   • This is also burdening the education system. On the first day of school this year, New York City enrolled nearly 20,000 illegal immigrant students into the school system.
5. Last week, in Prattville, Alabama, an illegal alien reportedly was arrested for raping a teenage girl after being released by DHS.
6. Yuma, Arizona, had 300,000 illegal aliens cross their town in just this past year. The Yuma Regional Medical Center said they have already incurred more than $26 million in medical care for illegal aliens, a number that he says the medical facility may never recover from.  
7. With the border wide open, illicit fentanyl pours in. Now, the Nation’s most lethal illegal substance, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, is hurting communities everywhere, including Little Rock, Arkansas.
8. A report released in August 2023 says that in Denver, Colorado, the city is spending at least $1,500 per illegal alien, totaling more than $23 million thus far. That number is expected to rise as this crisis worsens.

Spending more money on the border is not the answer. America First Policy Institute’s experts have researched and reported on this position extensively. The Biden Administration’s strategy of processing and transporting illegal aliens into our country requires a fundamental policy change. What’s more, the Biden Administration is the first in U.S. history to preside over a more than $1.7 trillion budget gap. Read here for a thorough analysis of Biden’s border supplemental request.

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Background:

House Committees are conducting ongoing oversight investigations into the crisis at the Southwestern border and how the policies and actions of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have precipitated the worst border crisis in American history. Read the Department of Homeland Security Committee’s interim report covering Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty, here. The Committee’s second interim report on unprecedented cartel control of the Southwest border can be read here. The Committee’s third interim report documenting the fentanyl crisis and criminal aliens entering the United States is here. The House Judiciary Committee released a report in October that further revealed the Biden Administration’s failure to follow statutory law and remove over 99 percent of released illegal aliens.