As the new year starts, demands from House Republicans to secure the southern border have only gotten louder. So much so that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and 60 GOP lawmakers visited Eagle Pass, Texas, to show the severity of the border crisis. Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ), one of the group's members, discussed the visit on Fox News's Faulkner Focus, saying the United States "is facilitating the logistic arms of transporting people from the cartels" through their laxity.
Just before the official visit, Rep. Biggs had a personal survey of the border, which he called "a non-sanitized view, non-regime, non-Biden Administration view," which he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
More alarmingly, he claimed a recent audit from the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed 75% of the 8 million border crossers who have arrived since President Biden took office are "totally unaccountable to any U.S. authority," meaning they have not been subject to tracking.
Does Texas have a constitutional right to defy Supreme Court on protecting its border?
While verification of this claim is currently lacking, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported in September that a DHS audit showed 18% of destination addresses given by illegal migrants were illegitimate, missing, or invalid for delivery.
"This administration is facilitating the logistic arms of transporting people from the cartels importing into the United States. We are facilitating that," Rep. Biggs added because Border Patrol agents can supposedly only take migrants at their word without proper vetting.
Other Republicans have said the United States has become an unofficial partner of the cartels, including Representative Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), who used similar wording to Biggs in saying President Biden is "a logistics partner for the drug cartels" in December, while Representative Cory Mills (R-FL), sarcastically called him their "MVP" in May.
Further compounding the problem, Biggs continued, was the lack of DNA testing for migrants under age 14.
"We have concocted, made-up family units coming in, and we want to do the DNA testing to see, 'Are you related to them?' and then we are going to release them. They are instead of stopping them at the border or turning them away, this administration has said, 'We are going to not only facilitate their entry, we are going to facilitate their distribution throughout the United States, and we are not going to keep track of them," said Biggs.
In April, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody released a grand jury report showing how improper vetting allowed for 250,000 migrant children to be victims of human trafficking. The following May, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) demanded Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas keep DNA testing for child migrants in place for this exact reason.
