Hagedorn calls Biden's border policies 'immoral'

May 25—Joining a dozen other congressman from 11 different states at the southern border on Monday, U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn said President Joe Biden unleashed a crisis by unraveling former President Donald Trump and Republican's border policies.

"The polices of President Biden are immoral," Hagedorn said.

Under Trump, "we ended catch and release. He was building the wall. We were making sure that people who want to claim amnesty did so from outside the United States," Hagedorn said in a El Paso, Texas, news conference Monday flanked by other congressional members. "But what happened is that Joe Biden came in and unraveled all those policies. These open border and amnesty policies — I call it America Last."

Hagedorn and members of the GOP's Border Security Caucus said Biden's polices are making it easier for drug cartels to sneak people into the country. It is motivating unaccompanied young people to attempt a dangerous journey across the border.

Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican who organized the trip, said apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the border are at a 20-year high, yet deportations are the "lowest on record."

"This is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis," Babin said. "We've also seen that drugs, which kill 70,000 Americans, are up an enormous amount."

Babin said that border patrol officials are spending 50 percent less time patrolling the border and are instead "babysitting" the influx of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border, "leaving our border unguarded."

GOP members of Congress repeatedly noted that Biden's hand-picked immigration czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, has yet to make a visit to the border.

"The United States of America is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration," Hagedorn said. "We draw the line at illegal immigration, and President Trump and Republicans were able to end a lot of the policies that were causing problems."

Hagedorn, who represents Minnesota's 1st District, including Rochester, said it would cost $1.3 billion to educate the 60,000 minors held in one facility, and that doesn't count the millions of illegal aliens already in the country whose education is being paid for by taxpayers.

The Biden administration is facing criticism from the political left and right in how it has handled immigration four months into his administration.

While Biden has eased some of his predecessor's policies, immigration activists argue that the president hasn't done enough to reunite families separated by Trump administration policies. And progressives accused Biden of turning his back on immigrants after he appeared to back off a sweeping immigration overhaul plan after a joint address to Congress in April when he acknowledged that major immigration polices wouldn't get enough bipartisan support this year.

The U.S. is on track to encounter more than 2 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the fiscal year, making it a record high, according to internal government estimates reviewed by CNN. Data shows that up to 1.1 million single adults are expected through September, along with up to about 828,000 families and more than 200,000 unaccompanied children.

The problems at the border will reverberate and affect every single state in the country, said Rep. Garret Graves, a Republican from Louisiana. He said last month alone saw 175,000 illegal immigrants trying to enter the U.S.

"That's like Tempe, Arizona, walking over (the border)," Graves said. "We've seen the numbers increase in terms of the interactions with border agents increase 944 percent."