Washington, D.C. — Today, Senator Ted Budd (R-NC) spoke at a press conference and slammed President Biden’s decision to allow Title 42 to expire without a sufficient plan to address the surge of illegal migrants that is currently overwhelming law enforcement at the southern border.
Tonight, Senator Budd will join Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and John Hoeven (R-ND) on a congressional delegation trip to Brownsville, Texas. They will receive a briefing from the border patrol and other law enforcement and assess the ongoing crisis firsthand.
Video:
Transcript of Senator Budd’s Press Conference Remarks:
In order to be a strong nation, we have to have strong borders. And right now, we don’t have that. We are in the middle of the worst border crisis in our nation’s history.
Since President Biden took office, there have been more than 5 million illegal crossings. That’s the most in U.S. history. But in addition to that, 1.4 million known got-aways. In addition to that, all of the unaccounted for unknown got-aways– including terrorists, human traffickers, and other bad actors that are taking advantage of the open southern border.
Now I’ve been there multiple times, and I’m going to be traveling there again today. So thank you to Senator Marshall and my other colleagues that will be going down there to visit with our border patrol and law enforcement.
They told me, in the times that I’ve been there before, that, yes, we need a wall. We need border enforcement, we need funding. But what we really need, in their words, is an administration that has their back; and right now, they don’t have that.
I talk with sheriffs from all over North Carolina’s 100 counties, and many of them came up to me saying the same thing: Every single county in North Carolina is now a border county because of Joe Biden’s policies.
We’ve simply got a president that has retreated from his responsibility to defend and protect this country. Bottom line: This is a dereliction of duty.
Securing the border used to be a bipartisan issue. Now, all of us here, we have solutions in addition to and that go beyond Title 42, which is ending at midnight.
So I want to call on President Biden to change course, to open a dialogue so that we can solve this crisis together. We know what to do. And we know that in order to be a strong nation, we have to have strong borders.
###
