Blaze News investigates: Reversing the illegal immigration crisis and fortifying national security

The Biden-Harris administration has created an immigration crisis that appears to be, at worst, irreversible and, at best, an unprecedented, monumental challenge for a future administration.

Shutting down the southern and northern borders would be just the first step toward repairing the damage caused over the past few years. Even with the borders secure, millions of illegal aliens who underwent abbreviated vetting processes and made unverified asylum claims would still remain in the country long after the Biden-Harris administration passes the torch to the next administration.

The sheer number of immigrants in the country already raises some troubling questions. First, is the problem too colossal to solve? If it is not unsolvable, what efforts would any attempt to solve it require? And how long would those efforts take?

‘One goal of the Biden mass illegal migration was to establish facts on the ground that would make it physically or politically impossible for the next Republican or Clinton-type Democrat to ever undo.’

While border security experts agree that the problem can be solved, they told Blaze News that doing so would require several important steps: first, a change to an administration that is actually dedicated to safeguarding national security. Second, this hypothetical future administration must roll out a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to undo years of mass unlawful immigration by reprioritizing efforts to locate, detain, and deport illegal aliens residing in the U.S.

How we got here

To understand how to turn the ship around, we must first realize the steps — and there were many — the Biden-Harris administration took to manufacture the crisis in the first place.

Over the past few years, more than 7 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S., and those numbers only include individuals whom the federal government knows about and not the millions of unknown and unidentified gotaways that snuck into the interior of the country without any vetting whatsoever.

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as the old saying goes. One goal of the Biden mass illegal migration was to establish facts on the ground that would make it physically or politically impossible for the next Republican or Clinton-type Democrat to ever undo."

From day one of the Biden-Harris administration, policies the former Trump administration put in place to curb illegal entries and fortify national security were immediately stripped away. In fact, within Democrat President Joe Biden's first year in office, he took nearly 300 executive actions related to immigration, including immediately halting the construction of the southern border wall, despite American taxpayers already having paid for the materials.

Biden also vowed to preserve the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that prevents those who arrived in the U.S. as children from being deported while also extending work authorization. Additionally, he expanded Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelan nationals, blocking deportations and providing work permits for these individuals.

Biden's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that the administration has focused on expanding so-called "lawful pathways" for foreign nationals seeking to relocate to the U.S., all the while claiming its efforts will crack down on illegal crossings.

Frankly, there is no evidence that the administration ever sought to prevent illegal immigration; instead, the evidence suggests it merely aimed to redefine "illegal."

One good example of this phenomenon was a border executive order, 89 FR 48487 - Securing the Border, which limited the definition of unlawful crossings to individuals who attempt to sneak into the country in between ports of entry.

The order did not apply to unaccompanied children, illegal aliens who are "determined to be a victim of a severe form of trafficking," or illegal aliens who "present[] at a port of entry pursuant to a pre-scheduled time and place." In other words, this order did not impact those who applied for an appointment at a port of entry through the administration's CBP One app to claim asylum. Instead, the administration's app worked to expedite the entry process.

‘Many are going to abscond and do their best to disappear.’

And these executive actions are just the tip of the iceberg in the Biden-Harris administration's effort to establish programs that acted as magnets, ushering in millions of illegal aliens. All of these efforts had the effect of speeding up the ability of foreign nationals to enter the interior of the country while significantly reducing the number of illegal aliens eligible for arrest and deportation.

Add it all up, and you get a crisis, which is what we have now.

Redirect existing funding

In order to execute the massive pro-illegal-immigration shift facilitated by the Biden-Harris administration, the federal government has pumped billions into non-governmental organizations tasked with providing shelter, accommodations, and humanitarian services to unlawful aliens.

A report published earlier this year by the Free Press pointed out that the top three most prominent NGOs — Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors Inc. — grew their profits from $597 million in 2019 to $2 billion in 2022, with numbers for 2023 not yet released.

Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection resources remain too strained to keep up with the increase of foreign nationals requesting asylum at ports of entry and entering the country. While it will undoubtedly be an expensive undertaking to provide ICE, CBP, and local governments with the resources needed to begin to reverse course, these efforts could be funded by redirecting dollars away from the NGOs, many of which seem to be making the problem worse.

Hankinson told Blaze News that undoing the open-borders crisis "could be paid for using the billions Biden tries to appropriate for NGOs to assist illegal immigration; contributions to U.N. organizations that facilitate illegal U.S.-bound migration; and grants via FEMA and other channels to U.S. organizations that pay for their travel, lodging, and other expenses once inside the country."

Since 2020, Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors Inc. have received nearly $7 billion in federal funding. For comparison, ICE's fiscal year 2024 budget is roughly $8.7 billion to support more than 22,000 positions split between several operational directorates, including Homeland Security Investigations, Enforcement and Removal Operations, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, and Management and Administration.

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration has attempted to allocate up to $1.4 trillion for wiping out student loan debt for borrowers. Those efforts have faced a number of legal challenges but, if approved, would pass all of "the costs on to the taxpayers," Hankinson stated. He noted that money "alone would more than fund every necessary part of a comprehensive strategy to return control to the border and the rule of law."

Liberal policies get in ICE's way

Many of the illegal aliens granted passage into the country under the current administration were released on their own recognizance, without tracking devices, while they await years-out court dates to review the validity of their asylum claims. Some fled to sanctuary jurisdictions that openly defied ICE's detainer requests to further dodge any future deportation efforts.

While ICE, which is tasked with tracking illegal immigrants released into the U.S., already has the tools it needs to remove individuals unlawfully in the country, its hands have been largely tied by the current administration and sanctuary policies, which were created as part of the "abolish ICE" movement, in liberal cities across the nation.

‘Congress would have to give significant investment and support for ICE, which has been sidelined and demoralized under Biden.’

Jon Feere, director of investigations with the Center for Immigration Studies, told Blaze News, "Any illegal alien released into the United States with a court date is, in theory, being tracked by ICE and can be called into an ICE office whenever the agency wants to talk. I suspect there are many individuals that ICE officers are monitoring as closely as they can. Still, many are going to abscond and do their best to disappear — whether they have GPS monitoring or not."

According to the American Immigration Council, there are roughly 11 million "undocumented" individuals residing in the U.S., and approximately 1.19 million of them have "final orders of removal." However, in some cases, they have been able to remain in the country because federal immigration officials are not certain of their location.

Hankinson told Blaze News that an efficient first step for ICE would be to remove the over a million illegal aliens currently in the country who already have final order removals.

"The 450,000 of them with criminal convictions and the 200,000 more with outstanding warrants or charges would be a good start," Hankinson stated.

Many of these individuals who are subject to removal from the country have fled to cities like New York City, Chicago, and Denver, which have sanctuary policies that shield illegal aliens, including those who have committed additional crimes in the U.S., from federal immigration officials. Local law enforcement agencies in these sanctuary jurisdictions are prohibited from honoring ICE's detainer requests, which ask local authorities to hold the individual up to 48 hours after their release date to allow ICE agents to complete a safe transfer to federal custody.

In the instances when the detainer requests are ignored, federal immigration officials are not even alerted when an illegal alien who has been convicted of a local crime is released from custody.

An ICE spokesperson previously told Blaze News that policies restricting cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration officers "threaten public safety." Without these regulations overturned, ICE is — and will continue to be — forced to "expend additional resources and search within neighborhoods to reapprehend these criminals at increased risk to the public and our officers."

It is significantly more cost-effective for ICE to place a detainer request and execute a transfer while the illegal alien is still in local custody. Additionally, it is much safer for the officers involved.

"When two officers can go to the jail, it's a secure environment," John Fabbricatore, a retired ICE Denver field office director and current Republican congressional candidate for Colorado's 6th District, previously told Blaze News.

"But when you go to a home, or you pull someone over in a car, they are in the community," he continued. "And now you have the potential as you go to pull someone over, they flee, they crash into somebody else. Or you go to a home where they have access to firearms. Or you arrest them in front of their house in a neighborhood where maybe their neighbors are on their side, and they come out and now there's a big riot."

Another major problem facing ICE agents is that the whereabouts of many of the unlawful immigrants in the country are unknown to federal authorities. In such cases, and with these sanctuary policies still in place, Feere told Blaze News that ICE agents will likely be forced to "conduct many city-by-city operations." He noted that it would benefit the agency if a future administration helped to increase its resources to support more officers and detention beds.

The federal government has also worked against ICE's efforts to prioritize the removal of illegal aliens who have committed crimes in the U.S. by moving to shut down its largest detainment center. A next administration seeking to untie the hands of ICE agents and accelerate mass removals would require additional detention bed space.

Hankinson told Blaze News, "Congress would have to give significant investment and support for ICE, which has been sidelined and demoralized under Biden. It would require tough dealing with 'sanctuary' states, cities, and towns, who should lose all federal funding if they refuse to allow law enforcement to enforce laws. These days, locating someone isn't as hard as it was in 1986 — the last big amnesty. Everyone has a phone and social media presence."

Empowering states and local jurisdictions

The Biden-Harris administration has fought tooth and nail to prevent states like Texas and Arizona from securing the southern border in ways the federal government has neglected to do for the past few years.

The administration lodged lawsuits against Texas for placing buoy barriers in the Rio Grande and installing concertina wire along the state's Eagle Pass border. The federal government also pushed Arizona leaders to remove shipping containers placed along gaps in the unfinished border wall.

As a result of the current administration's relentless dedication to wide open borders, states around the nation — not just those in the southwest — are dealing with the fallout of a manufactured illegal immigration crisis. The increase in unlawful residents has had a direct financial impact on local public education, health care, and law enforcement resources. However, there are many ways that state legislators and officials can seek to curb these issues.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, stated during a March episode of "Parsing Immigration Policy," "Illegal immigration is a huge unfunded mandate on the states because it's the state and local communities that bear the brunt of uncontrolled illegal immigration."

"It's important that states try to take action on illegal immigration not only to push back on what is happening at the federal level and the Biden administration's deliberate border crisis that they've instigated, but also because even if we do get to a point with a new administration that wants to enforce immigration laws and regain control of the border, the federal government can't fix this problem on their own," she continued. "They really need cooperation from state and local governments."

Vaughan noted that the most obvious place for states to start is by passing laws that impact public safety. She said that anti-smuggling laws, sentencing enhancements on illegal aliens, and prosecuting identity theft can go a long way in deterring unlawful immigration.

Vaughan explained that while some illegal immigrants have received work authorization from the Biden-Harris administration, many have not and are, therefore, utilizing fake identification to secure employment. A crackdown on identity theft could flush out this problem.

One of the most effective ways states can assist the federal government in rooting out unlawful immigration would be to pass laws preventing local jurisdictions from enacting sanctuary policies. Such legislation would ensure that local law enforcement agencies — particularly those in liberal enclaves of red states — would not be prevented from cooperating with ICE agents.

‘This will require a whole-of-government approach and every federal agency that touches the immigration issue.’

Arguably, the most common reason foreign nationals flock to the U.S. is for work opportunities. According to Pew Research Center, the number of illegal immigrants in the workforce grew from 7.4 million in 2019 to 8.3 million in 2022. A Committee on Education & the Workforce report estimated that the number was close to 8.8 million in 2023.

States seeking to drive out unlawful immigrants can turn off this magnet by adopting rules directed at businesses and recruiters who employ illegal aliens, such as requiring employers to use verification systems, like E-Verify, to check work authorization status prior to hiring. Vaughan noted that states must diligently perform checks and implement consequences for businesses that violate these rules to ensure the most effective results.

Final thoughts

It is not unlikely that some Democratic leaders are hoping that the current presidential administration has produced a crisis so massive in scale that the opposition finds it inconceivable and far too laborious and costly even to attempt to reverse. This is further evidenced by the fact that many liberal politicians are proposing mass amnesty programs instead of supporting efforts to locate, detain, and deport unlawful immigrants currently residing in the country.

For a new administration seeking to shut down the border and secure the nation, it will take an enormous coordinated effort, but it can be done, according to Feere.

He told Blaze News, "This will require a whole-of-government approach, and every federal agency that touches the immigration issue — from the State Department to the Social Security Administration — will have a role to play, as will the states."

"Would it be done soon? No," Hankinson told Blaze News. "In four years or eight? Unlikely. But it must be started, or we abandon the rule of law and concede that the executive can rule without regard for Congress or the judiciary."