Tucker: Biden's open-border policy brought chaos to America
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines how the president lost control of the southern border
Just two months into Joe Biden's presidency, his administration has lost control of our main international border. Entire populations are moving north through Mexico right now. Just last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended 100,000 illegal migrants in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Some Homeland Security officials believe that number will soon double, to 200,000 per month.
The overwhelming majority of these foreign nationals will remain here permanently. If the Democratic Party has its way, they will become citizens and registered voters. It's hard to comprehend just how big those numbers are. We've never seen demographic change like this. It's roughly the equivalent of a brand new Chicago every year, except a Chicago populated entirely by poor people with limited education who can't speak English. You're not supposed to say any of that, but so what? It's true.
The question is, how is it good for America? We live in a deeply fractured country on the cusp of an economic crisis. So how will an unprecedented surge of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals strengthen the American economy? How will it unite our society, which badly needs it? We'd love to hear someone answer these questions calmly and at length, since they're the only questions that matter.
Spare us the lecture about how opposing open borders is racist, while you're at it. The all-Hispanic counties of South Texas don't like open borders either. They made that very clear in the way they voted in November. The people responsible for this crisis don't want to talk about it and they don't want you to ask questions. If you do, they'll denounce you for attacking immigrants. Please.
SQUAD MEMBER ILHAN OMAR TO JOIN DEMS ON BORDER VISIT AMID BURGEONING CRISIS
Nobody thinks it's the immigrants' fault. You can't blame poor people for wanting to come here. Who wouldn't come? Free education, free health care, clean streets, safety. You'd have to be crazy not to leave Guatemala for Texas. So of course they come. The people streaming across the border want better lives for their families, and no one can hate them for that, least of all us. The people to blame are the reckless ideologues who caused this disaster. Joe Biden tops that list. Biden wanted this to happen. He said so out loud at a Democratic debate.
JOE BIDEN, SEPTEMBER 2019: I would, in fact, make sure that there is, we immediately surge to the border all those people seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That's who we are. We're a nation says, "If you want to flee and you're fleeing oppression, you should come."
"You should come," said Joe Biden to millions of the world's poorest people. Joe Biden promised them the world's best medical care for free. He pledged not to deport anyone. He told them they would make better Americans than the Americans who were born here. And, of course, they heard him. The moment Joe Biden took office, many thousands began the journey north. Some of them arrived at the border wearing Joe Biden T-shirts and demanding to be let in. They are happy to explain why they came.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS: This father, who asked that we not show his face, traveled to Mexico from Brazil with his wife and three young kids before crossing the border.
RADDATZ TO MIGRANT: Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?
MIGRANT: Definitely not.
RADDATZ: So did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?
MIGRANT: Basically, basically, the main thing was the violence in my country. And the second thing I think was Joe Biden.
BIDEN ADMIN IGNORED WARNING SIGNS THAT BORDER COULD SPIRAL INTO CRISIS
They're running from collapsing countries and running toward Joe Biden. You could have seen this coming. Senior officials at CBP did see it coming, and they warned the White House that a human disaster was on the way. The policies changed and the rest of the world responded. You knew it was going to happen. But the Biden administration ignored them and then it doubled down, announcing a mass amnesty and an end to the deportation of unaccompanied minors. Any young person who entered our country alone would be allowed to stay.
So, not surprisingly, many of them came. As of Monday night, there are over 15,000 so-called unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody, waiting to be processed. Not all of them are children or even minors. At least 5,000 of them are teenagers, up to at least the age of 17. There's no real way to know how old they are or even who they are, because that's the nature of illegal immigration and that's why functional countries use visas. Once again, this is a human tragedy for everyone involved – the migrants making their way through Mexico, which hates them and mistreats them, and those of us who live here.
What's amazing is that even as this crisis appeared on the horizon, the Biden administration seemed totally unprepared for it. They turned out to be even more incompetent than they look. As of Monday night, there are no more beds in border facilities. We have long passed the point of not enough.
On Monday, DHS announced plans to turn the San Diego Convention Center into a migrant shelter. Other migrants will be given hotel rooms. According to Axios, the administration plans to spend at least $90 million on lodging for people coming here illegally. Think about that: At a time when there are more than half a million Americans living on the streets – a crushing number that our leaders ignore, but that rises every single year – at that moment, Joe Biden is giving hotel rooms to illegal aliens. It's hard to believe that it's real, but it is real.
BIDEN HHS TO TURN SAN DIEGO CONVENTION CENTER INTO MIGRANT SHELTER
Those migrants who can't get a hotel room or live in downtown San Diego or fly at public expense to processing facilities on the Canadian border are simply being released into the country. This is what open borders actually looks like. Chaos. How chaotic is it? We can only see the outlines of it because the Biden administration is keeping journalists at a distance. They don't want the public to see too much. Their excuse, of course, is COVID. It always is.
CHUCK TODD, NBC "MEET THE PRESS": Right now, we have no access to or photos of the conditions in the facilities. There have been no ride-alongs with agents. All inquiries are routed through Washington. There have been strict controls on sharing data. Local Border Patrol folks feel like they can't even talk to our folks down there. Is there a gag order?
DHS SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: There is not. That is unequivocally false, Chuck, and let's be clear here. We are in the midst of a pandemic. We are, because of the extraordinary leadership of the president, climbing out of it more rapidly than ever before. But we are still in the midst of the pandemic.
Oh, so there's a pandemic, and that means Border Patrol agents can't do phone interviews, right? So here you have the administration telling journalists that there's a once-in-a-lifetime news event underway, something that will change this country forever, but they're not allowed to cover it. "Sorry, your cameras might hurt us politically."
MAYORKAS BLAMES MIGRANT SURGE ON TRUMP ADMIN, NOT BIDEN POLICIES
How can the press corps reply to this? This is the president they wanted and worked for, and reporters who spent the last four years pushing with increasing hysteria for media censorship. So it's not as if they can stand on principle and demand openness. They wanted fascism and they got it. Still, you'd think someone at NBC might laugh when Majorca cited COVID. Really? Isn't this the same guy who's been releasing illegal migrants into our country without even testing them for coronavirus? Yes, it is.
MAYORKAS, MARCH 17: There were times earlier when individuals were apprehended and we sought to expel them and we were unable to expel them and we were compelled to release them and we did not have the opportunity to test them.
Somehow, nobody in the press corps thought to note the irony of that. The guy who's releasing migrants illegally into our country without even testing them for COVID is using COVID as a pretext for keeping the press from knowing what they're actually doing. No one mentioned it. Nor, for that matter, does anyone in Washington yell about kids in cages anymore. Remember kids in cages? For a long time, it was all they could talk about. They just kept repeating it. As always, it was the ultimate civil rights atrocity.
So how are those kids doing under the Joe Biden administration? We can't answer that question with any certainty, because as we just told you, they are blocking our cameras. We're not allowed to see what they don't want us to see. But thanks to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, a surprising hero in this story, we do have a few photographs of detention facilities taken from the inside. You can't see cages exactly, but there are a lot of young people living in what appear to be cellophane cells.
Is that an improvement? It's hard to see how it is. Joe Biden doesn't seem all that interested either way. Sunday, he suggested he'll get to the border at some point.
REPORTER: Are you thinking of going to the border?
BIDEN: At some point, I will.
REPORTER: Do you want to see firsthand what's going on in those facilities?
BIDEN: I know what's going on in those facilities.
Nancy Pelosi isn't scurrying down to South Texas either. She doesn't need to, she knows how great illegal immigrants are. They work in her vineyard in Napa. They work cheap and they're good people. In fact, they're far better people than you are.
PELOSI, MARCH 18: When they come here with their hopes and dreams and aspirations, these parents bringing their children [and] their hopes and dreams and aspirations for a better future for their children, that courage, that determination, those aspirations are American traits. They all make America more American with all of that. And they are true and legitimate heirs, these Dreamers are, of our Founders.
If you set up a system where people don't get to run stuff until they're really old and so rich they have no connection to the country itself, having lived in complete isolation for decades, a system like that produces people like Nancy Pelosi saying things like what you just read.
Foreign nationals who break our laws are the "true and legitimate heirs" of America. In other words, it's not your country, it's theirs. And why wouldn't she feel that way? Migrants work cheap. They don't complain or form unions or go on disability or celebrate all those stupid holidays like you do. They're grateful for the chance, not the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would give amnesty to at least a million immigrants who are here illegally as long as they can prove that they've worked in agriculture for just 180 days over the previous two years.
That's the price of citizenship: 180 days working in agriculture. It's gotten cheaper over time.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The amazing thing is that 30 House Republicans voted for that bill. Why? You know why. Lobbyists for cheap labor got to them. That's just one amnesty bill that Republicans are backing. Yet another, introduced by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla. – a favorite of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's – would provide recipients with "immediate legal status" and a pathway forward to citizenship.
Over in the Senate, meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is trying something very similar. He's preparing to introduce a bill to give millions of people here illegally amnesty and work permits. Now, for the people getting those benefits, this is very good news. But how does it help you and your neighbors as the country that we grew up in teeters on its foundations? No one seems even to be asking that question because nobody cares.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the March 22, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
Best of Opinion
Get the recap of top opinion commentary and original content throughout the week.
By entering your email and clicking the Subscribe button, you agree to the Fox News Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content and promotional communications from Fox News. You understand that you can opt-out at any time.