The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, now led by Republicans, announced Thursday that it will hold a hearing in early February to probe the White House’s border failures.
Under President Joe Biden, committee members said policies have “fueled human smuggling” and enabled drug cartels to flourish at the nation’s southern border. Then there’s the record of illegal migrants flooding into the U.S.
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) accused the president of harboring a “radical open borders agenda (that) has ignited the worst border crisis in American history.”
He said the administration needs to be held accountable for turning “every town into a border town.”
The representative added that Biden’s “deliberate actions” encourage cartels to increase the flow of deadly fentanyl across the border and fuel human smuggling and illegal migration that has reached historic levels.
“The Biden administration’s deliberate actions are fueling human smuggling, stimulating drug cartel operations, enabling deadly drugs such as fentanyl to flow into American communities and encouraging illegal immigrants to flout U.S. immigration laws.”https://t.co/ZSzLpcubD3
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 19, 2023
A record 2.4 million encounters with illegal migrants were recorded by Border Patrol in Fiscal Year 2022, and the new year is already on pace to eclipse that mark.
The hearing, which will be conducted on the week of Feb. 6, will feature eyewitness accounts directly from the nation’s southern border. Comer invited the chief Border Patrol agents from four sectors of the border with Mexico to testify before the committee.
The committee chair also sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Comer requested a wide array of documents and communications to get a better fix on the emergency, the costs of cleaning it up, and the risks to national security.
The investigation promises to dig into the release of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into the U.S. interior. It also seeks to probe the ending of “Remain in Mexico” and the impact the border chaos has on federal agents.
Comer specifically targeted the Biden White House in the letter, blasting the president for waiting until there was a GOP majority in the House before finally visiting the border.
The chairman went on to accuse the administration of “lying to the American people” and criticized recent immigration policy changes as “unlawful.”
It is past time for the White House’s prominent role in the historic crisis to be examined in detail. And it is shameful that it took Republicans assuming control of the House before Congress finally made an attempt to hold anyone accountable for the chaos at the southern border.
