Putting a Stop to Illegal Immigration

The American people are facing a crisis at our southern border. It seems that we hear of a new “record amount” of illegal crossings at the border nearly every month. In October alone, there were 240,988 illegal immigrant encounters at the border, a 235% increase from October 2020. This was the 32nd straight month where illegal immigrant encounters had been higher than the month before. Since President Biden took office there have been over 6.4 million illegal crossings at our southern border, including 279 individuals on the terrorist watch list. At least 1.7 million of those illegal immigrants were able to evade border patrol.

It’s obvious that the Biden administration’s open border policy has encouraged illegal immigration at an unprecedented rate. Instead of recognizing the problem and strengthening border security, he’s welcomed these criminals into our country with open arms. In May, the Biden administration announced that they would allow some illegal immigrants to be released into the U.S. with no way to track them. He’s also encouraged the use of our nation’s airports as shelters for over 60,000 illegal immigrants, which fellow Republicans and I have made clear will not stand.

As Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, I was proud to lead a letter along with 69 of my colleagues opposing the Biden Administration’s allowance and encouragement of the use of airports throughout the nation as temporary shelters for illegal immigrants. I believe our nation’s airport infrastructure was built to facilitate commerce and transportation, not to serve as housing for unvetted and undocumented migrants.

I was also proud to support the Secure the Border Act earlier this year. This commonsense legislation restarts construction of the wall, deploys new technology to our border, and ends catch and release once and for all. Additionally, it reinstates the “Remain in Mexico policy” which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their immigration court date.

Enough is enough. It’s time to finish the wall. It’s time to secure our border. We know how to solve this crisis, it’s time to get the job done.

Sincerely,

Sam Graves