Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-Va., joined a group of her colleagues on Wednesday in Washington to once again blast Pres. Joe Biden’s plan to end Title 42 and his Southern Border policies in general.
“We’ve been here before,” Capito said of previous “cautionary tales” of what is on the horizon at the border with current federal policies.
This time, it’s Biden planning to end Title 42 on May 23, a policy that was put into place in early 2020 because of the pandemic, sending back to Mexico anyone trying to cross the border to seek asylum except unaccompanied minors.
Capito said the current crisis at the border, which saw about 1 million rejected because of Title 42 last year, will turn into a “catastrophe” if the policy is lifted because an estimated 18,000 would cross the border each day, three times the current number.
Urging Biden to change his mind on ending Title 42 next month is now a bipartisan effort.
“Our colleagues in growing numbers are imploring the President to postpone, relook at and rethink the decision to get rid of Title 42 in May,” she said.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, both Democrats, are also calling for Title 42 to be extended.
More Democrats are expected to come on board with Republicans on the issue, she said, and one of her GOP colleagues called ending Title 42 “policy insanity.”
Capito, who is Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, said she and other Senators talked with Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary, to review his plan to handle the increase in numbers after Title 42 ends.
“We were on this call yesterday (Tuesday) with Secretary Mayorkas and when we talked afterwards…a six-point plan…it’s only a way to manage more and more numbers that are coming,” she said. “It isn’t really managing. It’s transportation. It’s health care. It’s moving people from the border into more central parts and then processing them there.”
Capito said the subcommittee has been “very generous with Homeland Security.”
“We’ve provided them already with the supplemental to help them deal with the surge,” she said. “When we see what’s going to be the influx, or catastrophe as I would categorize it, that is another press on the appropriations and on the resources that we’re going to be willing to look at and give to the Department of Homeland Security.”
Capito has also been critical of the Biden Administration because there is no plan in place to deter people from trying to cross the border and ending Title 42 will make it worse as asylum seekers will be quickly processed then sent into the country with a date to return for adjudication.
They may or may not return for that, she said, and there is no follow-up.
Another issue is the influx of drugs into the country coming across the Southern Border.
“Why would somebody in West Virginia be worried about this? Because we have the highest percentage of deaths from overdose per capita than any other state in the union,” she said. “Fentanyl is killing our friends and neighbors and it’s all coming through the southern border. So the diversion of agents…and they’re losing agents because the morale is terrible. Why would you want to be protecting our southern borders and be prideful of what you’re doing in law enforcement every day when your president is just letting you get overrun? You can’t divert. You can’t disrupt the drug trade because you’re so busy processing and doing all the things that happens when 18,000 people come across the border every single day.”
Other Senators pointed to the fact the federal pandemic “emergency” has not ended so Title 42 continues to be needed for the same reason it was established more than two years ago.
The Senators also agreed that the entire Biden Administration policy at the border is making things worse, not helping.
“So, there’s time, Mr. President, to rethink this,” Capito concluded. “There’s time for us to find a better way. The plan needs to be deterrence. Whether it’s expedited removals, quick asylum adjudication to get that, the Remain in Mexico policy. We have some solutions here that worked under the Trump administration to keep these numbers down. It’s time now to look seriously at these before this catastrophe descends upon us.”