During CNN’s State of the Union coverage, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, who is supporting 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump stated that President Joe Biden doesn’t need legislation to secure the border, can “go a lot farther” than the Senate border bill by reinstating Remain in Mexico, and that H.R. 2, the Republican border security bill that Biden opposes, “is the perfect bill.”
Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “What did you make of how he addressed immigration tonight?”
Judd answered, “I was incredibly disappointed. Instead of announcing the executive actions he’s going to take, he, instead, blamed other people for the problem. Look, if he’s not going to get a bill, which he’s not going to — it’s not going to happen, if he’s not going to get that, then he has the responsibility to step in and give us executive actions that will help us secure the border, and he refused to do that and that was incredibly disappointing. It was also incredibly disappointing that he mentioned our name without giving context to what exactly it was that we were supporting. Yes, we supported that the bill goes to the floor. Yes, we supported an amendment process. There was a lot of bad in that bill, but there was a lot of good. So, what we walked away from after this State of the Union is we walked away with nothing. He had the opportunity to announce to the American people…that these are the executive actions that he’s going to take. Instead, he just blamed other people and then walked away. And now we’re left with the same chaos that we currently — that we’ve been dealing with.”
Judd added, “So, long-term, I would love to have legislation, because that lives past administrations. But, in this particular case, does he have to have legislation to secure the border? And the answer is no. He could secure the border with executive action tomorrow if he wanted to. And that’s what we’re not getting. He knows what he needs to do. I have personally met with Secretary Mayorkas on a number of occasions, and we told him, if you get rid of Remain in Mexico, this is what’s going to happen, but these are the actions that you can take to avoid that, and they completely and totally disregarded that. And so, that’s — again, this chaos that we’re currently experiencing, it could end immediately with executive action.”
Judd further stated, “[T]he 1,500 additional Border Patrol agents is not something that I support, and I’m a union. I don’t want to pass the burden on to the taxpayer. I believe that if we had proper policy, we have the resources right now, we have the technology, we have the infrastructure, we have the agents that are necessary to secure the border. What we don’t have is we don’t have policy. And so, what I don’t want to do is I don’t want to shift the burden onto the taxpayer and cause them to pay a lot more money than what is necessary.” And that he would have been pleased if certain parts of the Senate bill, like its changes to the credible fear standard, passed.
He added, “But the most important thing that the courts upheld, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s right to implement Remain in Mexico.” And that the President “could implement Remain in Mexico, which would go a lot farther than what this bill would have done.”
Judd concluded, “H.R. 2 is the perfect bill. H.R. 2 is not going to get passed because it’s not bipartisan. But there’s a possibility that, later on down the road, H.R. 2 gets passed. But if this bill were to pass right now, the chances that another border bill would get passed is pretty slim. I’ve gotten two bills passed into law, and I can tell you that it took years for that to happen. And so, I recognize what it is to get a bill passed, and it’s very difficult.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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