With the expiration of Title 42, the southern border is seeing a new wave of illegal immigration, totally unchecked by the Biden administration. Put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, Title 42 gave U.S. border officials the power to turn away migrants due to health concerns, specifically with regard to screening for Covid-19 in order to slow the spread.
Title 42 was not a solution to the longstanding insecurity at our southern border. It was a band aid, but now that the band aid has been ripped off, the bleeding will only get worse. Who stands to lose the most with the border thrown open further? Women and children. I have visited the border and have seen the devastation wrought by years of inadequate border security and federal policies that encourage migrants to risk their lives coming to the United States illegally.
Mothers and children on both sides of the border are the biggest victims of these policies. Violent cartels, emboldened by lax law enforcement, traffic women and children. Unaccompanied minors are tragic pawns for bad actors on the border as children are “recycled” repeatedly in fake families to help them gain admittance into the United States making it easier to bypass certain legal hurdles.
The journey of many migrants to the United States is horrific. Cartel thugs and human traffickers molest and rape women and children as a rite of passage. Children are left to die in harsh conditions along the perilous border-crossing journey. I have seen the rape trees and the miles of discarded items left in trash heaps across the desert. I have spoken with the mothers who live in fear for the safety of their children. I spoke with families who had their homes invaded and property destroyed. One such family who lived near the border in McAllen, Texas, decided to fill in their inground pool when illegals crossing the border began using it as a bathtub.
Too often, illegal immigration encourages men to leave their families to attempt the border crossing. Even if they are caught by border patrol agents, illegal immigrants are being released into the United States with court dates years away. Once in the United States, men might send money to their families for a time, but all too often, the money stops coming. The women and children are left to fend for themselves with increasingly violent cartels controlling more towns and cities. If they try to leave and come to the United States illegally, they are put into the hands of the same cartels to be extorted, abused, and potentially left for dead on the dangerous journey.
I will never forget the mother I met near the Nogales Border in Arizona in 2007. She was a Mexican native living outside Nogales, Mexico. She told me many women in her community were left defenseless with no means of support when their husbands and young men left them with promises of financial support and better opportunities. Many of those men never came back. “We want our men back,” she said.
As the recent wave of migrants into places like New York has made clear, the border crisis is not just a problem for states along the border. This is an issue that affects every state. Without adequately screening the people coming into our country, violent criminals can come and go as they please. The people crossing the border are not only from states south of our border but from countries all around the world. Recently, border agents detained an Afghan national on the FBI’s watch list. That is one suspected terrorist they caught, what about all the others who slip through the open border undetected?
In addition to terrorists, we have a steady stream of fentanyl and opioids crossing our borders. Moms for America has spoken to far too many brokenhearted mothers who have lost a child to the fentanyl epidemic to take this threat lightly. Teens are tricked into purchasing tainted pills and our young people are dying from fentanyl poisoning in record numbers.
By failing to secure the border, our government has created a market for the most vial despots to inflict the greatest atrocities against humanity. These ruthless criminals prey on the weakest and most vulnerable and the Biden administration has become complicit in their actions.
As an advocacy organization of mothers, Moms for America issued a statement calling for lawmakers to declare a state of emergency and address the crisis. The expiration of Title 42 highlights the ongoing threat and long-standing need to secure the southern border and put an end to the humanitarian crisis.
The overwhelming influx of illegal migrants throughout the United States shows that what happens at the border does not stay at the border. The future of our country depends on our ability to protect and to defend mothers and children. That must include securing our border.