Border Security

April 3, 2025

The southern border is finally secure without any new laws. President Trump has enfocred our current laws and is making America safer. 

Americans need to understand the grotesque reality of the Biden Administration’s open borders policy. Children are trafficked, women are assaulted. In 2021, over 500 people died in the desert trying to cross our southern borders. 

As the chart above shows, the peak of the first wave of migrants occurred in 2014. President Obama correctly called it a humanitarian crisis and his Homeland Security secretary said it was a “bad day” when apprehensions exceeded 1,000.

Responding to the second wave in 2018 and 2019, President Trump enacted polices and entered into agreements with Mexico and Guatemala that greatly reduced the migration of children and families. Under Senator Johnson’s leadership as Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee from 2015-2020, Senator Johnson’s committee was able to:

• Established quantifiable, objective metrics for DHS to use to measure border security (Border Security Metrics Act of 2015, included in the NDAA).
• Held more than 30 hearings and released two staff reports examining the factors that have led to our failure to secure our borders, including one examining lessons we can learn from Israel’s approach to border security, aviation security, and cybersecurity.
• During the humanitarian crisis at the border in 2018, the committee held more than 20 bipartisan staff briefings, several member briefings, and also took staff delegation trips to the border, culminating in a majority staff report in 2018 examining the staggering increase in family unit illegal border crossings from 2015-2019, and providing recommendations to address the problem.
• Developed a proposal in 2019 for a streamlined process called Operation Safe Return that became the basis for two DHS expedited processing programs at our border that have helped reduce holding time for illegal crossings and make the process more effective and efficient.

Unfortunately, under the Biden Administration, or the third wave, border security is routinely experiencing daily apprehensions over 4,000.  This is a direct result of the Biden Administration’s policies. Biden transition officials asked Trump Homeland Security officials how to prevent a border crisis. They were explicitly told to keep the Migrant Protection Protocols (a.k.a. Remain in Mexico) and other agreements with Mexico and Central American countries in place. Upon assuming office, instead of heeding that advice, President Biden completely dismantled the very policies that had ended the surge. The border is now in a crisis that far exceeds anything during the previous administrations and the media is silent.  

On August 16, 2022, Sen. Ron Johnson hosted a roundtable on the crisis at the southern border to discuss the unprecedented flood of illegal immigrants, the deadly effects of unregulated fentanyl and the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border.

Participants included:

Mark Morgan – Former Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Brandon Judd – President of the National Border Patrol Council
Laurie Badura – Mother of Fentanyl victim and founder of Saving Others For Archie
Mark Podoll – Green Lake County Sheriff
Martin Schulteis – Washington County Sheriff
Ryan Waldschmidt – Fond du Lac County Sheriff

Watch the full roundtable here. 

In July 2022, Senator Johnson toured the southern border in McAllen, Texas and what he saw was “profoundly disturbing.” He called on President Biden, Vice President Harris and Secretary Mayorkas to come to the border to witness the depredations caused by their policies. 

Watch the July 15, 2022 news conference here. 

In May 2022, Senator Johnson was part of a surreal hearing with Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas regarding the administration’s complete mishandling of the crisis on the southern border.

Secretary Mayorkas simply would not acknowledge the fact that President Trump had pretty well stopped the flow of unaccompanied children, of family units exploiting our very generous, credible fear standard under asylum.

The first step to fixing the border crisis is admitting there’s a problem and Sec. Mayorkas won’t even do that.  Watch the full exchange here and here.

In March 2021, Senator Johnson joined a group of GOP senators and witnessed many tragedies during their two-day trip to border.  To read about this experience, click here.