Speaker Johnson rails against Biden’s ‘weak’ border executive order

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday ripped into President Biden’s executive order on border security, calling it “weak” and “window dressing.”

Johnson, speaking to reporters Tuesday morning shortly before the order was unveiled, argued Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas took a series of actions that “engineered the open border” during Biden’s White House term.

“The evidence is so clear and now suddenly he wants to issue some weak executive order; one, by the way — one executive order, supposedly to try to address the issue. It’s window dressing. Everybody knows that if he was concerned about the border, he would have done this a long time ago,” Johnson said. 

The executive order would give the White House additional authority to restrict the flow of migrants at the southern border and allow officials to turn away migrants at the southern border when the seven-day average of daily border crossings exceeds 2,500 between ports of entry. It will take effect immediately.

Johnson suggested the order doesn’t include several long-sought border security measures demanded by Republican lawmakers.

“From what we’re hearing, it will ignore multiple elements that have to be addressed, the elements that were in our legislation that we passed over 14 months ago to fix the broken asylum program, to fix the broken parole process, to reinstate the remain in Mexico policy, to end the catch and release policy that they’ve advanced,” Johnson said, in reference to the GOP-led border crackdown legislation passed more than a year ago.

The legislation, titled H.R. 2, was dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“Whatever little short measure that he’s [Biden’s] going to do here, is not going to solve the problem,” Johnson said. “In fact, by some estimates, it might make it worse, because it will extend once again, the welcome message … incentivize people to come. ‘Be among the first 2,500 people,’ is what we’re hearing … ’the first 2,500 per day to come in,’ to be insured you get your welcome package when you come into the country illegal. It’s absolute madness.”

The Hill reached out to the White House for further comment.

Johnson and House Republicans have long demanded the Biden administration take executive action at the border and argued his policies have contributed to the mass influx of migrants entering the U.S. at the southern border.

In January, Johnson’s office released a list of 64 instances it claimed showed the Biden administration “undermining border security policy and encouraging illegal immigration,” which he referenced again Tuesday.

Biden and White House officials initially said it was up to Congress to pass border security measures, but lawmakers have been unable to pass any bipartisan legislation on the issue. Conservative Republicans and former President Trump killed a bipartisan border agreement earlier this year.