March Numbers From the Border

The March numbers from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were just released. It's never been this bad.

I've been tracking apprehensions at the southwest border since 2012. The daily average apprehensions of 5,554 exceeded May 2019 record level of 4,651. Most recent week daily average approaching 6,000. That's a large caravan every day. That's a crisis.

What is most heartbreaking is the loophole in our broken immigration laws that incentives the most evil people on the planet to bring young children with them to the border. Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business. The news has brought reports of a 10-year old found distraught and crying after being abandoned, 3-and 5-year-old girls dropped over the border wall, and 5- and 6-year-old siblings abandoned by smugglers.

There is nothing humane about enticing parents to subject more than 20,000 children to the depredations of human traffickers. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and DHS Secretary Mayorkas should be ashamed of the awful human toll of their policies.

Video Series From Border Visit

The final episode in a four-part video series was just released about our visit to the southwest border in Texas.

I was part of a group of 18 senators who went to the border to see first hand the results of President Biden's open border policies.

In these videos, you will see what we saw: children packed like sardines inside detention facilities, yellow arrows literally marking the way to our border, smugglers taunting us, and private citizens building their own walls to stem the flow.

This didn't have to happen. This is a self-inflicted wound on our nation.

SOFA ACT To Combat Opioid Epidemic

Amid the continuing and growing crisis at the border, I joined with Congressman Scott Fitzgerald to introduce the Stopping Overdoses of Fentanyl Analogues (SOFA) Act to give law enforcement enhanced tools to combat the opioid epidemic and close a loophole in current law that makes it difficult to prosecute crimes involving some synthetic opioids.

I first introduced the SOFA Act in July 2017. In August 2018, the National Association of Attorneys General sent a letter to Senate and House leadership, expressing that the attorneys general of all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico support the SOFA Act and encourage its swift passage.

SOFA (Saving Others for Archie) is also a Wisconsin organization dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of drug addiction. It was started by Lauri Badura (pictured above) after her son Archie died from a drug overdose in 2014.

Border patrol agents and officers have seized more than 4,900 pounds of fentanyl during the first five months of fiscal year 2021, already surpassing the total for all of fiscal year 2020.

Letter To Secret Service

Senator Chuck Grassley and I sent a letter pressing the U.S. Secret Service to answer questions about its involvement with Hunter Biden.

Recently, the Secret Service told us that it did not provide protection to the Biden family in 2018 and did not discover any records relating to a October 2018 incident involving Hunter Biden's discarded firearm. However, text messages allegedly from Hunter Biden indicate that the Secret Service was involved in this incident.

Read more in the Washington Examiner.

ICYMI: Watch This Wall Street Journal Video

Kim Strassel published an essay in the Wall Street Journal on my treatment by the media and my refusal to be silenced by the left.

She argues that "yellow journalism" (a sensationalized press) should be called "blue journalism" -- the new media practice of abandoning standards to work seamlessly with the progressive left against any opposition.

I encourage you to read the article and watch the companion video.