One time ago, a handful of so-called Republicans, led by Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, backed a frontier expenses that would have sold out American independence. As it turns out, Lankford and his associates always needed to stifle our borders to stable them, as evidenced by the declining illegal crossings seen during President Donald Trump’s first month in office.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s opening, illegal immigrant apprehensions dropped an average of 2, 000 per time, according to new data, to only 786 after the commencement.
” From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, the number of U. S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85 % from the same period in 2024″, ABC News reported, citing U. S. Customs and Border Protection data. ” In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93 %”.
The results weren’t by opportunity. When Trump took office, he signed a number of executive orders that authorized the National Guard to work with Customs and Border Patrol agents to secure the border, including one that stated a national crisis at the southern borders, reinstated his” Be in Mexico” scheme to deter illegal bridges, and signed a number of senior orders.
What’s more, Biden’s negligence was not an excuse for so-called Republicans to capitulate to the left’s radical open-border demands — yet, that’s exactly what a handful did.
Lankford,  , along with , Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Utah’s Mitt Romney, and Maine’s Susan Collins, backed a bill that could have allowed nearly 2 million illegal aliens into the U. S. over a year. They approved granting the Department of Homeland Security certain conditions for the extension of the border. Additionally, the bill would have allowed Biden to decide whether to suspend border closure for 45 days per year if he felt it was in the “national interest,” as my colleague Kylee Griswold pointed out.
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The bill was portrayed by the propaganda press as a “bipartisan” solution and as a depiction of uncaring Republicans who opposed the open-border policy in the context of the border crisis.
This was made clear by headlines like HuffPost’s” Republicans Who Screamed About A Crisis On The Border Now Oppose A Plan To Fix It.” Vanity Fair claimed” Republicans Don’t Want To Lose Their Favorite 2024 Talking Point”, while Bloomberg argued,” House Republicans Don’t Want To Fix the Border”.
According to Griswold, the Republican-led House had just passed a real border bill the year before that would have restarted the Trump-era border wall’s construction, imposed stricter restrictions on asylum eligibility to legal ports of entry, enacted harsher penalties for overstaying expired visas, maintained Title 42-esque “expulsion authority,” and provided border authorities with additional grant funding.
Democrats didn’t care until they realized it would hurt their chances of winning re-election once more when they realized how important it was to secure the border. However, just because Democrats didn’t care about preserving our sovereignty doesn’t mean Republicans should have clung to their far-leftist agenda.
Trump’s recent success at the southern border shows that none of the concessions were ever required to have a secure border, despite Lankford’s bill’s purview as nothing more than a surrender to far-left open border policies.
Brianna Lyman is a correspondent for The Federalist on elections. With a degree in International Political Economy, Brianna received her degree from Fordham University. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
