Rep. Jim Jordan calls Biden border crisis ‘intentional’

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan accused the Biden administration Wednesday of deliberately fueling America’s border crisis — as the first of a promised series of hearings dedicated to the ongoing migrant surge got underway.

The Ohio Republican kicked off part one of the panel’s investigation by arguing that the record number of migrants flooding into the US each month was proof the White House doesn’t have “operational control of the border.”

“Month and month after month we have set records for migrants coming into the country,” Jordan said in his opening remarks.

“Frankly, I think it’s intentional. I don’t know how anyone with common sense or logic can reach any other conclusion. It seems deliberate, it seems premeditated, it seems intentional.”

President Biden, 80, has been widely criticized for his failure to stem the record influx of illegal border-crossers into the US.

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House Republicans have also called for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to be impeached and removed due to his handling of the crisis.

“Make no mistake, the Biden administration is carrying out its plan,” Jordan said.

“We all heard Secretary Mayorkas sit in front of this committee and said, ‘We are executing our plan on the border,’” he added. “And we all heard President Biden say we’re trying to make it easier for people to get here. Well, they’re certainly succeeding in that.”

“The worst part is that none of this had to happen,” Jordan went on. “Under President Trump, the border was secure, under President Biden there is no border — and Americans are paying the price.”

Border and national security, as well as the influx of fentanyl into the US, were the major issues tackled during Wednesday’s hearing.

Among those to testify were two Texas county judges, an Arizona sheriff and the co-founder of an anti-fentanyl non-profit group whose 15-year-old son died of an overdose of the drug.

“For us, this isn’t a political issue,” Brandon Dunn, co-founder of the Forever 15 Project, told lawmakers. “It’s an issue of safety of our children and the people of America.”

More than 2.4 million migrants were stopped at the southern border in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, US Customs and Border Protection data show.

The hearing, which took place just weeks after Biden made his first trip to the beleaguered US-Mexico border region, offered a chance for GOP lawmakers to air their grievances about current immigration policies.

Meanwhile, the panel’s Democrats described the hearing as a sideshow, with Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler – the committee’s ranking member – calling it “more of the same, haphazard, chaotic style we have come to expect of this new Republican majority.”

“The first hearing will showcase the racist tendencies of the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the party that seeks to close the border to refugees from places like Cuba and Venezuela,” said Nadler. “It almost makes me miss their usual obsession with conspiracy theories and the FBI.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) accused House Republicans of having “rooted on some of the chaos around this issue and [they] don’t want to be a part of the solutions or change.”

“If we want to talk about some of the fentanyl facts, 96% of the fentanyl seized in the last fiscal year was seized at ports of entry” rather than during illegal crossings, Swalwell added. “And 86% of the convictions around fentanyl coming across our border were convictions of US persons.”

“So we should talk about fentanyl, we should go after China, but this – this is chaos, what I’m seeing from my Republican colleagues.”