Tom Cotton: Joe Biden Considers Coronavirus Tests for Traveling Americans But Not Illegal Aliens

Border Crossers with Children
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
John Binder

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) says that while President Joe Biden’s administration considers requiring coronavirus tests for American citizens flying domestically, illegal aliens are being released into the United States with no such requirement.

In an interview with Axios’s Mike Allen on Sunday, Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that the Biden administration is reviewing a plan to require Americans to produce a negative coronavirus test before traveling on airplanes.

“There’s an active conversation with the CDC right now,” Buttigieg said of the plan.

While the plan is being considered, border crossers and illegal aliens at the U.S.-Mexico border are not having to abide by any similar requirements. Cotton slammed the Biden administration for potentially forcing Americans to undergo more burdensome testing rules than border crossers and illegal aliens.

“Tests for Americans before domestic flights? By dismantling immigration enforcement, the Biden administration invited a wave of illegal immigrants — and they’re allowed in without COVID tests,” Cotton wrote in a statement online. “To Biden, illegal immigrants come before Americans.”

As Breitbart News reported, border crossers are currently being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border before they are put up in high-rise hotels, in many cases, and then eventually released after about a 10 to 14-day quarantine period. No coronavirus testing is required for their release.

After the Biden administration suspended the Remain in Mexico policy — which cut asylum fraud and reduced illegal immigration — the Catch and Release program has been revitalized where border crossers are apprehended, processed, and then promptly released into the U.S. interior.

Biden’s dismantling of the legal wall at the southern border has been at odds with the American public, as Cotton noted.

Exit polling from the 2020 presidential election revealed that 5-in-6 voters said “limiting cross-border traffic and restricting the admission of international travelers is important” to stop the coronavirus. Only 13 percent of voters said they disagreed that a closed border does not help.

Those who said they support strict border controls to stop the coronavirus include 80 percent of registered Democrats, 92 percent of registered Republicans, 76 percent of swing voters, and 80 percent of Hispanic Americans.

Likewise, as Biden packs the U.S. labor market with more foreign workers at a time of mass unemployment — where more than 17 million Americans are jobless — the overwhelming majority of voters in the 2020 election said they want less immigration overall, not more.

More than 3-in-4 voters said it is important that the U.S. “limit the admission of new immigrants and foreign guest workers as long as unemployment remains high due to the COVID-19 crisis.” Nearly 90 percent of registered Republicans said immigration should be reduced, as well as nearly 70 percent of registered Democrats and almost 67 percent of swing voters.

“Buttigieg saying you will have to take a coronavirus test, but border crossers are being released without a coronavirus test and are applying for permits. It doesn’t make sense in a pandemic and a national unemployment crisis,” former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan told Breitbart News.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.

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