An Administration Against Border Control?

The United States has an illegal immigration problem. A big one. It’s no secret the left would like to see open borders, and the current administration has done a lot to help that happen, including appointing staff whose goals have been to abolish ICE. Derek Maltz, former head of the DEA’s special operations division, said: “The current border policies are placing every American at risk.” So just how bad is it, and which Biden administration members are contributing to the ongoing border crisis?

Border Crisis: Drugs, Cartels, and China

On July 19, the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing entitled “Biden and Mayorkas’ Open Border: Advancing Cartel Crime in America.” Maltz, who worked with the DEA for 28 years, spoke vehemently about the dangers Americans face due to lax immigration laws and policies:

“The Mexican cartels are taking over and taking advantage of the vulnerabilities at the border, but they’re working with the Chinese transnational criminals at levels we’ve never seen in the country. They’re operating with no fear.

“Allowing Mexican cartel operatives and unidentified people from around the world to enter the country illegally at record levels is enhancing the ability of criminals to kill Americans. This is not what the government should be doing to keep us safe.”

Maltz insinuated China and the cartels are working in tandem, providing biochemical weapons in the form of drugs to kill US citizens. “As far as I know, there’s never been a terrorist organization in the history of America that has killed this many Americans,” he said, referring to the increase in crime and deaths across the country related to fentanyl. He cited a statement made by FBI Director Christopher Wray about how China is the biggest long-term national security threat to the United States, explaining:

“Already this year, 14,655 Chinese nationals, many of them military-age men, have been apprehended on the border. Let’s look deeper. That’s a 1,540% increase from last year, and over 10,700% increase from 2021.”

He added: “The administration’s policies related to the border are a recipe for disaster. And I’m not a MAGA lunatic, okay?”

Critics claim President Joe Biden is just a puppet for the left - but if so, who are the puppeteers whispering in his ear and pulling his strings? Consider just two of the commander-in-chief’s top officials and their controversial ideals: Avideh Moussavian and Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia.

Avideh Moussavian

Avideh Moussavian started working in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in March 2022 and then was appointed as the agency’s chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy in March 2023.

According to her USCIS profile page, Moussavian implemented Biden’s humanitarian parole programs, which include “supporting the launch and implementation of Uniting for Ukraine, the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and process enhancements for deferred action requests related to labor agency investigations, as well as representing the agency in stakeholder engagements and Congressional briefings.”

Before working for the administration, she was employed at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), which advocates for defunding ICE and Customs and Border Protection, from 2013 to 2022. In 2020, Moussavian co-authored a report that supported ending immigration detention altogether. As stated in “Building the Movement”:

“Ultimately, it is best to coordinate the fights to abolish immigration detention and to guarantee universal representation at the local, state, and national levels. The collective struggle for immigrants’ rights should strive to honor and achieve the visions of both movements, resulting in the right to counsel for immigrants facing deportation and the end of detention altogether.”

And, in 2019, Moussavian tweeted that ICE is “misleading the public and making our workplaces less safe,” with the hashtag “abolishICE.”

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

In April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is the new officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “In this role, she will lead efforts to ensure and integrate civil rights and civil liberties protections across the Department’s programs and activities,” the agency stated.

Her background, according to DHS, includes “associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion; the Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar; and clinical professor of law at Penn State Law in University Park, where she is taking a leave of absence.” Furthermore, “Her research focuses on the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and the intersections of race, national security, and immigration.”

Wadhia, however, doesn’t believe in deporting convicted felons and, like Moussavian, thinks detention centers should be vastly reduced. In a 2020 interview with the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, she said:

“I don’t know that any element of criminality should suffice to being a priority for enforcement, or even any felony for that matter, and I think that part of that has to do with how I view the role of prosecutorial discretion and the importance of looking at the whole person and equities.”

In 2021, Wadhia criticized the use of terms related to migrants during a talk on Racism in the US Immigration Law and Policy. “The term ‘alien’ is not unrelated to terms like ‘illegal immigrant,’ ‘illegal immigration,’ ‘illegal alien.’ Like ‘alien,’ these terms are necessarily exclusionary and inconsistent with values of inclusion and equity in the country.”

Former ICE Chief of Staff Jon Feere, who served under Donald Trump’s administration, tweeted in March, “From what I can see, Professor Wadhia has no background in oversight or agency management. She’s a ‘policy advocate’ and a former lobbyist who seems to oppose most immigration enforcement. Clearly not a champion for DHS’s mission.”

Rob Law, former USCIS policy chief under the Trump administration and current director of America First Policy Institute’s Center for Homeland Security & Immigration, told the Daily Caller, “I think it’s apparent from the top on down that this is an administration filled with appointees that do not believe in the rule of law, and they don’t really care about the American people.”

In an administration with top officials who are strong advocates for abolishing ICE, who are against deporting criminal illegals and getting rid of migrant detention centers, it’s no wonder the country is seeing a tsunami of illegal migrants crossing the border.