Frustrated voters in Southern California ripped the Biden-Harris administration and blamed the White House for problems caused by an influx of illegal immigrants at the Mexico border over the past year.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee visited the San Diego region of California on Thursday for a border tour and to meet with local officials Friday morning, as residents vented about how the increase of illegal immigrants crossing the state’s border with Mexico affects daily life for residents.
“Too many stories for too long have not been told. It’s the reason that we brought people here today,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose district included the Santee and Vista communities where lawmakers toured and held the hearing.
The panel of five witnesses lamented how the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border affected them as illegal immigrants released into their communities disrupted hospital operations, children being bused to school, and led to more than 1,200 drug-related deaths in one county alone last year as fentanyl seeped over the border.
As more immigrants began crossing from Mexico into California last fall, human smugglers in Mexico shifted people away from Texas and further west. Overcrowded Border Patrol facilities opted to let migrants in custody be released directly into communities because local nonprofit groups were overwhelmed and unable to take in the hundreds being encountered daily.
Between September 2023 and May 2024, as many as 154,000 migrants who crossed the state’s border illegally were released into the country from a pop-up facility set up in the county, according to Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin.
“The Biden-Harris administration approach to border security and immigration has significantly impacted California with San Diego County at the forefront of these challenges,” testified Hestrin.
The district attorney explained that the temporary center served as a $6 million stop-gap solution to help manage the influx. According to Santee Mayor John Minto, 99% of migrants who passed through the center continued on to destinations nationwide where they had family or connections awaiting their arrival.
But the influx of people into the region also affected other aspects of life. Hospitals were significantly overcrowded, while local law enforcement also saw retail theft soar, according to Vista, California, Mayor John Franklin. A regional anti-retail theft task force found that illegal immigrants worked with organized criminal organizations to steal and then sell those items, forcing some businesses to shut their doors.
“We’re also dealing with high rates of crime. Stats on crimes committed by illegal immigrants in California are not available because, unlike in Texas, California state policymakers refuse to allow our local law enforcement to collect these data,” Franklin said. “We can extrapolate that tens of thousands of crimes are committed in our community, the same as Texas, that would not have occurred if we had a secure border.
“The president is required by the Constitution to take care to faithfully execute the laws,” Franklin added. “Unfortunately, President Biden and Vice President Harris have decided to ignore our border and immigration laws.”
Drug overdoses spiked to 1,203 in San Diego County last year, more than double from several years ago, as fentanyl manages to get past customs officers at the border and into the community and deeper into the country, Franklin said.
Don Sharp, undersheriff for Riverside County, criticized the Biden-Harris administration for how it said it had “sanctioned” the border crisis.
Sharp blamed the White House for an “overwhelming” flow of fentanyl into the community, adding that it was “only made possible by complete border security failures under the current administration.”
When President Joe Biden took office, he canceled border wall construction funded by Congress, halted deportations, ended a program that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico, and took other actions. Soon after, the number of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border spiked along primarily the Texas border. Over the past year, more migrants attempted to enter Arizona and California than Texas.
Since Biden took office, more than 10 million immigrants have been encountered at the nation’s borders — more than any two-term White House administration. Despite the dramatic decline in monthly arrests of illegal immigrants since the start of the year, Californians remain furious over the influx of people into their communities.
Cory Gautereaux, who lives close to the border, testified that he and others had found “hundreds” of personal identification documents, including passports and driver’s licenses, that migrants discarded at the border before being taken into custody.
“Why am I finding the identifications of young children and newborns at the border who are being smuggled and trafficked here on a daily basis?” Gautereaux said during his testimony.
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The hearing had a lackluster turnout among members of Congress.
Issa and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) were the only three out of 42 members on the committee who showed up, given that the House is still on recess before returning to Washington, D.C., early next week. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) did not attend and the chairman’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
