Buckeye Reporter

This afternoon, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) joined Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto to discuss the Biden administration’s attempts to lift Title 42, a public health order put in place to allow border authorities to turn illegal immigrants away due to the COVID public health crisis. While Senator Portman does not agree with the administration’s attempts to lift Title 42, what is more important, he says, is to fix our broken immigration system. Last year, one million illegal immigrants entered the United States – this year we are on track to have about two million people cross into our country. In addition, we have seen huge influxes of illegal drugs flooding across our southern border, contributing to a record number of overdose deaths in 2021. The only meaningful way forward, Portman argues, is to work on a bipartisan basis to enforce our laws and fix our asylum system so it works the way it was intended.

PORTMAN ON TITLE 42

“Title 42 is now in court. There's a Louisiana District Court that has said the administration cannot end it now, but they haven't given a date as to when it could be ended. The administration said just a couple of hours ago that they are going to go along with the court on this, so we don't know what the date is yet. But the bottom line is 42 is a public health order. In other words, it has to do with COVID. At some point it's going to go away. We hope, you know, COVID goes away. We need a solution that’s much deeper than that. The problem is that although about half the people are being sent back under title 42, the other half are being let into our country. That is roughly a million people last year. Looks like this year we're on track to have about two million people. People that come to the border, unlawfully, apply for asylum, are allowed to go in, spend somewhere between six to eight years waiting on their court case. By that time, imbedded in the community. Very few are ever sent home. In fact, during the first eight months of the Biden administration, the first eight months, there were only 26,000 people sent back by expedited removal and about 800,000 people had come in unlawfully. So that's the problem we’ve got to solve. We've become a magnet for people from all over the world because they know they can come to our border, claim asylum, and walk in.”

PORTMAN ON PHONE CALL WITH SECRETARY MAYORKAS

“Listen, I'm not going to talk about what he said in that call, but I'll talk about what he said publicly, which is consistent with what he said in the call, which is that he thinks the system is broken. And it clearly is. Nobody can look at this system and say it's working. My own view, for what it’s worth Neil, is that we should have legal immigration and even increase that with regard to the skills that we need in this country, so open the front door a little more, but let's close the back door. It's not only about illegal immigration, it's about the drug issue because as you know, the most dangerous of the drugs, particularly the synthetic opioid called fentanyl, is now coming in through our southern border. Dramatic increases in those numbers, along with the dramatic increases in immigration. And that’s what affecting every state, including mine. With a record number of overdose death and most of them occurring because of fentanyl. So it's all related. There's an obvious solution here, which is on a bipartisan basis fix this problem so our immigration system works the way it was intended.”