Re: OSHA, the new Gestapo [Village News, Reeder Letter, 11/11/21]

Julie Reeder, you are correct. It just doesn't make sense. None of it. It's not right. It's not constitutional. It just doesn't make sense... Unless our current president and his administration intend to dismantle and destroy this United States of America, our constitutional republic, that many or even most of us have come to know and to love.

“The Disaster at Our Southern Border” is a case in point.

That is the title of an article published by Hillsdale College based upon a lecture given in July of this year by Mark Morgan.

Morgan is a visiting fellow at the Federation for American Immigration Reform and at the Heritage Foundation. He served as acting commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Customs and Border Protection and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Trump administration and as chief of U.S. Border Patrol in the Obama administration. Morgan has a long list of further credentials that won't be elaborated upon here including a B.S. degree in engineering.

Suffice it to say that Mark Morgan knows what he is talking about.

The following points made by Morgan are taken from the Hillsdale College publication from July.

According to Morgan, in just a few short months, the Biden administration has created a disaster on the southern border of the United States. It did so methodically – and by all indications intentionally – undoing every meaningful border security measure that had been in place.

As a result, we have had five straight months of over 170,000 illegal immigrants apprehended at the border. The number in June was the highest in over 20 years. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been effectively shut down.

The current out-of-control surge at the border stems chiefly from the fact that the Biden administration acted quickly to halt the Remain in Mexico Program and return to catch and release.

We are hearing more and more subsequently about root causes – especially from Vice President Harris, who President Biden charged with developing a “Root Causes Strategy.” But what we are hearing is bunk. 

The fact is that when the U.S. opens its borders – which is what it amounts to when we return to a catch and release policy – illegal immigrants flock to the U.S. That’s the root cause of the crisis at our southern border.

Compare the numbers in April of last year to those of this April. There was a 900% increase in illegal immigration. The economic conditions in Central America didn't markedly change during that period. The climate didn't markedly change. Our policies changed! That’s the root cause.

Make no mistake, criminal organizations – which are adept at exploiting weak and ambiguous U.S. immigration policies – are paying close attention to what's happening and will adapt their tactics and procedures accordingly. The commonsense reality is that by incentivizing and facilitating illegal immigration, the Biden administration is making it easier for drugs to pour into the U.S., for human trafficking to expand, and for criminal aliens to infiltrate our society.

It is simply common sense to view border security as national security. If you make this point today you risk  being called a racist or worse. But it needs to be said over and over until we fight our way back to the point where we have bipartisan consensus that immigration laws should be enforced.

Illegal immigration, border security, the erosion of the rule of law, and the loss of our nation’s sovereignty are interconnected, and should be debated as important issues in local and state politics as well as national.

When Morgan was the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol in the Obama administration, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson told us that 1,000 illegal immigrants a day is a bad day. Today that number is approaching 7,000 and nothing is being done about it. This can't be allowed to continue. A country that cannot control its borders is not a country, and I’m sad to say that we are facing that eventuality.

Jim Bowles