The border crisis is now an interior crisis. What will the GOP do?

While Border Patrol agents are learning the finer points of preferred pronouns, criminal gang members are crossing the southern border unmolested. And if border agents happen to confront them, they’re often cited and released.

Where do they go? Everywhere.

What is the Republican plan to stop them? Good question.

If Republicans cannot wage a fight to the death with Biden over Homeland Security funding of catch-and-release, the party has no reason to exist.

As if Chicago didn’t have enough native-born criminals to contend with, local police find themselves arresting more and more illegal aliens who recently arrived from Venezuela. According to CWB Chicago, a local crime watch outlet, as of the end of November, Chicago police had arrested nearly 700 self-identified Venezuelan nationals, up from 26 last year and just six in 2021. The most common crime? Shoplifting.

Roughly 21,000 migrants have arrived in the Windy City since the summer of 2022. The vast majority of them are from Venezuela. Chicago, a proud sanctuary city, is struggling to house them all.

Chicago has long been a haven for transnational gangs from Mexico and Central America, so we have now added Venezuelans to the mix. Lending credence to those who believe Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro opened his prison doors to export his most violent criminals, Chicago police recently warned that members of El Tren de Aragua are likely among the new arrivals. The notorious prison gang traffics in drugs and humans and is identifiable through tattoos that include a skull with a gas mask and an AK-47 rifle.

No news isn’t good news

The Biden administration cannot persist through a sustained PR war accentuating the pernicious effects of the border invasion it encouraged. This is exactly why the Biden administration seeks a news blackout, in which Republicans are all too willing to participate.

Earlier this month, John Modlin, chief Border Patrol agent of the Tucson Sector, posted on X (formerly Twitter) a thinly disguised cry for help. Due to the ongoing surge in border activity in his territory, he wrote in a post since deleted, his office would be suspending all communications on social media.

In other words, rather than conceding that his office would no longer tweet just how bad things are, Modlin tried to rationalize the looming media blackout with a need to harness all personnel to deal with the crisis. Except their version of dealing with the crisis is processing and catch-and-release, making it much worse.

Modlin’s riveting accounts of the border invasion were likely too hot and spicy for the Biden administration, so they had to be stopped. Facing blowback from the press and public, Modlin apologized and promised to be transparent.

Modlin was clearly trying to send an SOS message to the public. A few days before his post, Modlin testified candidly before the House Homeland Security Committee: “It is demoralizing to me as the leader of Tucson Sector to experience these numbers we’re experiencing.”

A 'Kansas-Nebraska Act' moment

With illegal aliens flocking to every major city, Republicans will never confront an issue that is at once more existential and as easy to address politically. Americans are not happy with the way their government is addressing the border crisis. Their angst is bipartisan and widely shared.

The Biden administration is in trouble. An NBC News poll earlier this fall found that Republicans hold a commanding lead over Democrats on the immigration question.

What’s more, a recent Siena College poll found that 84% of New Yorkers regard the influx of illegal aliens to be a serious problem. More telling is that 64% of the blue state’s voters faulted the Biden administration and only 29% approved of Biden’s handling of the issue.

“Seldom do we see an issue where at least 79% of Democrats, Republicans, independents, men, women, upstaters, downstaters, blacks, whites, Latinos, Catholics, Jews, and Protestants all agree ... that the migrant influx is a serious problem,” explained Siena College pollster Steve Greenberg.

This is the GOP’s Kansas-Nebraska Act moment. Just as the Whig Party’s fecklessness over slavery in the 1850s led to the rise of the Republican Party, the Republican Party’s cowardice and incompetence in the face of illegal immigration could very well lead to the GOP’s demise. If Republicans cannot wage a fight to the death with Biden over Homeland Security funding of catch-and-release, the party has no reason to exist.

Aside from a handful of principled House members like Chip Roy (R-Texas), how many Republicans are demanding that Congress cut off all funding for catch-and-release by February 2, which is the deadline for passing the Homeland Security budget? How many are willing to put a bright spotlight on the Biden administration’s news blackout?

Not many. Instead, we have Senate Republicans working with Democrats on random “border funding” in exchange for more Ukraine grift. They believe we cannot have a secure border unless we pay for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Nigerian prince scam.

Rather than confront the issue head-on, Punchbowl reported that Senate Republicans have taken ending asylum and parole off the table. A focus on border funding without policy changes will result in the Biden administration getting more resources to be used for more catch-and-release.

As blue cities like New York City and Chicago suffer under the strain of the invasion, Republicans will never have a better chance to force a funding fight — and real changes — with the Biden administration.

Republicans have the leverage, the public relations advantage, and, in the House at least, the power to expose the administration’s perfidy through public hearings. If they cannot draw the line on the final February 2 deadline for 2024 DHS funding, we should treat the party the way the original Republicans treated the Whigs in 1854.