A day late and a dollar short

On Feb. 29, Joe Biden made his second trip to the southern border since he became president. But as we all know, his visit to the border town of Brownsville, Texas, was just a photo-op and his latest attempt to try to fool Americans into believing he takes the border crisis seriously. Unsurprisingly, residents of Brownsville had harsh words for Biden. "Feels like it's a day late and a dollar short," said one. "By a stroke of a pen, you could stop this. You don't need Congress," said another. They hit the nail on the head.

Biden's border stunt backfired. It only highlighted just how disastrous his policies have been and how effective former President Donald Trump's were. In Biden's first 100 days in office, he issued 94 executive actions impacting immigration, including ending construction of Trump's border wall. Biden could make significant progress to end this crisis by simply bringing back the numerous policies he got rid of for no other reason than the fact that they were Trump's.

As Biden stands idly by, the situation on our border will continue to spiral out of control. More people were caught illegally crossing the border in Biden's first year of office than the entire four years of Trump's presidency. January was the 35th straight month where monthly illegal immigrant encounters have been higher than even the highest month seen under Trump. Biden has no one but himself to blame for the invasion at our southern border.

Biden and the Left's radical immigration policies are costing the lives of innocent people. In February, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was brutally murdered in Athens-Clarke County in Georgia by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. A video from 2020 appears to show then-candidate John Williams, who is now the local sheriff, saying that he would not cooperate with ICE, the agency in charge of deporting illegal immigrants. The very same month that Riley was killed, an illegal Salvadoran immigrant was arrested in connection to the murder of a 2-year-old in Maryland. ICE had called for the illegal immigrant to be deported twice before the shooting death of that innocent child.

Biden's border crisis is also overwhelming our nation's health care system. Due to the massive influx of illegal migrants, some hospitals in the United States, especially those in so-called sanctuary cities, have been forced to turn away American citizens and reduce the number of beds reserved for people in need of care. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over health care policy, I sent a letter on Feb. 28 to the Biden administration demanding details of what is being done to ensure the crisis at the border is not hurting American citizens' ability to get care. The bottom line is that until we return to the Trump-era policies that actually secured the border, the health of our entire nation will continue to suffer the consequences.

Photo-ops and empty rhetoric won't end this crisis. What we need is a change in policy. Our nation would not be facing the worst border crisis in American history if Biden had simply kept in place Trump's effective immigration agenda. It's incredibly maddening that the only reason Biden got rid of those tough immigration policies is because they were Trump's. It's childish, wrong and costing the lives of innocent people. As your voice in Congress, I will never stop fighting to advance the policies we need to make our border secure again like it was under Trump.

JASON SMITH represents Missouri's 8th Congressional District.