President Joe Biden (D) stated during a recent interview that his administration is currently determining whether he has the authority to shut down the southern border.
In an interview with Univision’s Enrique Acevedo, Biden said that he is not sure that he is able to stop the surge of migrants coming into the United States via the border.
Biden blamed Republicans for failing to support legislation that he claimed would have granted him the authority to curb the migrant crisis. The president admitted that Customs and Border Protection does not have enough officers to properly vet migrants entering the country.
“We’re in a situation where, for example, we don’t have enough officers to even interview people to discern whether they have a legitimate fear or concern to qualify to come in. We don’t have enough people at the border with our Border Patrol people. We don’t have enough machinery that we can detect fentanyl and illegal drugs coming in,” Biden stated.
“We worked this with a very conservative Republican from Oklahoma, a senator, came along, and he ran on one side and Democrats on the other side, and they worked for four months, and they came up with a proposal. It didn’t have everything I wanted,” he continued, referring to the $118 billion, 370-page bill released by the Senate in February. The legislation lumped together massive funding for military aid for Ukraine and Israel, humanitarian assistance for Gaza, and southern border security provisions.
Biden touted that the bill “provided for a significant more personnel [at the border] to make an orderly transfer and allow legal immigration to increase, not decrease, and diminish illegal immigration.”
He blasted President Donald Trump for allegedly pressuring Republicans to vote against the legislation.
The reporter asked Biden whether he had “made a final decision on taking executive order in terms of what you want to do at the border, that includes the power to shut down the border.”
The president claimed that he had “suggested that.”
“We’re examining whether or not I have that power. I would have that power under the legislation. When the border has over five, 5,000 people a day trying to cross the border because you can’t manage it, slow it up. There’s no, there’s no guarantee that I have that power all by myself without legislation. And some have suggested I should just go ahead and try it. And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court. But we’re trying to work that, work through that right now,” Biden said.
Over the first five months of fiscal year 2024, the Border Patrol reported over 1,151,000 encounters. CBP’s data does not account for known and unknown gotaways who are not being tracked by law enforcement authorities.
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