The Biden Administration is resorting to empty talk on the border because it won’t give up its policies facilitating illegal immigration, drug trafficking and a lot of unlawful activity. This is why Texas is resorting to razor wire barriers in its own defense and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas faced impeachment. Look not at their words but their deeds, and don’t be fooled.
Since President Biden took office, more than 5.5 million illegal immigrants have been encountered at our border, plus at least 1.7 million “gotaways.” The non-detained docket has ballooned to over 6 million, including hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals.
Here is where they expose themselves as hypocrites when they suddenly talk about “shutting down” the southern border: Biden has thrown the “third border” wide open between the U.S. and the Caribbean. Not only does his Administration have no intention of closing it, but they’re showering crony Caribbean nations with political gifts and taxpayer dollars. In turn, those islands are now bustling transfer stations for illegal migrants, gangs, drugs and human trafficking heading back to our country.
One example: the Dominican Republic, where drugs, forced labor and human trafficking is endemic. It is only 80 miles from the U.S. shores of Puerto Rico, which border officials call “prime territory for drug runners and human smugglers” of illegal immigrants.
In this Oct. 8, 2013 photo, a Dominican anti-drug police officer stands behind packages of seized drugs during a news conference at the National Drug Control Agency in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is now the region’s biggest transit point for drugs. A U.S. military assessment projected that 6 percent of the cocaine destined for the U.S. this year will pass through the Dominican Republic alone. (AP Photo/Manuel Diaz)
Thanks in part to the priorities of the anti-borders agenda, the Biden Administration has a schizophrenic relationship with the Dominican Republic. They admit how bad things are in the DR but still warmly embrace its leaders and never press them to do anything about it, because to do the hard work necessary to reduce the problem would draw attention to their own failures and self-serving agendas.
On the one hand, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power says how “thrilled” she is by the Dominican government and hands over tens of millions in aid, while Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya praises it as a “democratic bright spot.” Biden himself put on all the pomp and circumstance for the Dominican president in November at the White House and sent a top domestic political adviser, Tom Perez, down to Santo Domingo to apparently talk about everything except the misery the DR fosters at home and exports to our shores.
US President Joe Biden, right, meets Luis Abinader, Dominican Republic’s president, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Biden on Friday will host almost a dozen leaders from throughout the Americas as his administration establishes a new forum to bolster regional competitiveness, address migration and its causes, and offer the US as a strategic alternative to China. Photographer: Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Meanwhile, the State Department downgraded the DR in its latest human trafficking report and detailed how its government doesn’t meet the minimum standards in fighting it. Criminal trafficking networks are bringing victims into the DR from other countries in Latin America, making it a potential regional hub close to the U.S. mainland.
Dominican narco-traffickers have exploited our weak immigration system and set up strongholds in the Northeastern U.S., where the DEA states they “dominate wholesale distribution of heroin and fentanyl.” Just this year, Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE), arrested a Dominican national in Boston who had previously been jailed for distributing fentanyl and was deported in 2021. Using the vast transnational web of Dominican narco-traffickers, he’d gotten right back into our country and back to work like nothing happened.
Officials responsible for border protection, law enforcement and human trafficking couldn’t be clearer about the crisis on the “third border,” and the Dominican Republic is a particularly bad section of that frontier. But the White House won’t hear of it.
Since taking office, the Biden Administration has sent over $100 million in foreign aid to the Dominican Republic. It’s beyond time to examine the return on investment from these massive expenditures, and to find out whether U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing inaction or misdeeds by the Dominican government that are directly harming our citizens and our national security.
While Biden fails to act, members of Congress have started to take notice. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul has asked the State Department for a breakdown of funding to the Dominican Republic. Representative Troy Nehls urged the Department of Justice Inspector General to investigate taxpayer dollars that have been wasted on the Dominican criminal justice system.
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 16: Ranking Member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) questions witnesses during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing looking into the firing of State Department Inspector General Steven Linick, on Capitol Hill on September 16, 2020 in Washington, DC. The foreign affairs committee issued the subpoenas as part of the panel’s probe into accusations that Linick was fired while investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s role in a controversial $8 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia.
The Biden Administration’s coddling of the Dominican government has gotten us nothing, aside from more cocaine, fentanyl, gangs and illegal immigrants on American streets. When officials at the highest levels of our government create the border crisis, then go easy on countries that contribute to the problems, it is American citizens who ultimately suffer. Chairman McCaul and Representative Nehls deserve credit for making sure the crisis on the “third border” gets as much attention and priority as it deserves.
Tom Homan is a senior fellow at the Immigration Reform Law Institute and the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
