Shannon Bream, a host on Fox News, recently confronted Senator Lindsey Graham in an interview over the current problem with the U.S.-Mexico border. The host asked the senator why Congress is yet to “fix” the border issue since everyone is well aware of the recurring problem. In the 2024 fiscal year, which started in October, there have been about 2,222,770 border encounters with immigrants, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Without a doubt, this surge has shown that the number of illegal immigrants in the country has increased significantly and is causing disruption in the country. Therefore, many Republican lawmakers have tried to make tougher immigration laws in order to reduce the influx. However, when the Biden administration brought a border reform bill to the Senate in February this year, it failed to advance immediately.
Again, the administration tried to pass another immigration reform bill that also failed after almost all the Republican senators blocked it from advancing. This was with a 50-43 vote, with six Democrats and two independents also joining the Republican Senators to oppose the bill. However, the Congress needed sixty votes to make the bill move forward.
This bill proposed that the administration would shut down the border if the average number of immigrants was above 5,000 in a week or 8,500 in a single day. Therefore, when Bream asked Graham why Congress has yet to fix this problem, she highlighted the efforts over time. The host pointed out that Biden knows the problem, the Senate and Congress know that there is a problem and yet all these lawmakers have not “fixed” this pressing issue.
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Bream also brought up Biden’s executive orders, particularly the “Parole in Place” program, which seeks to ensure that U.S. citizens who have spouses and children who aren’t of legal status can keep their families together. Senator Graham responded to Bream’s questions, saying that the president can fix the border issues without any need for congressional action.
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Therefore, he believes he simply “chooses” not to do so. According to Graham, the bill he introduced was rejected by the Senators because it was a “joke,” especially regarding the issue of parole. He claims that Biden has illegally paroled about a million people in the country, and the bill simply encouraged more illegal immigration. In addition, he criticized Biden for being an “open border president” who has not fixed the border problem even though he easily could.
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On the other hand, most Democrats are blaming Republicans for opposing the May bill, which is allegedly the “strongest and most comprehensive bipartisan border security bill” that Congress has gotten in history. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, has also addressed the Republicans and blamed them for opposing the bill, which would have fixed a lot of border issues.
During his interview, Graham continued to oppose Biden’s executive order and the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) support of it. He believed that the union was misguided in its support and should condemn Biden’s actions.
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