We Are Closing the Border

An Oval Office Address from President Biden

(I’m not a speechwriter or a border expert. The exercise below is, by definition, arrogant and the polices may be faulty, but here’s what I’d say if I were he…)

My Fellow Americans…

We all know there is a crisis on our southern border. I have tried to work with the Republicans in Congress to address that crisis. Some, like Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, have made an honest effort to create a bipartisan policy. Others, like Donald Trump, have made it clear that they oppose any deal…for the worst possible reasons. For cynical political reasons.

I want to make this very clear: The overwhelming majority of people trying to cross our border are good people. They are fleeing chaos. They only want the opportunity to work hard, build a life, a future for their children. They are like your grandparents, perhaps. I know they’re like mine. Those—like Mr. Trump—who describe these migrants as criminals or escapees from mental hospitals are only trying to scare you. It is disgraceful fear-mongering. And worse: it is an effort to exploit a controversial issue, while doing nothing about it. That’s not good enough. We must act to control our border.

To deal with this situation effectively, we have to look at it honestly. That includes members of my own party who have refused to take this problem seriously. So tonight, I am ordering a pause in our current immigration policy. We must keep our southern border open for trade. But we need to close it as a port of entry for immigrants—and take steps to slam the door on human and narcotics trafficking.

We cannot afford to play Mr. Trump’s political games. We need to act now. And so, I’m announcing a series of executive measures to control our border:

First, I am ordering elements of the 1st Cavalry, 82nd Airborne and 4th Infantry division—25,000 troops in all, based at Fort Cavazos and Fort Carson—to be deployed along our southern border. If that is an insufficient deployment, I won’t hesitate to send more. They will be a human wall. A defense not just against illegal immigrants—but more important, against those criminals who traffic in drugs and humans. We are going to be very tough on such criminals. When caught, they will be going to jail for a very long time. Indeed, we are going to turn our Guantanamo Bay facility into a maximum security holding center and prison for narco-traffickers. I want to be very clear about this. Your cross-border rampage is over. There will be no place safe for you—we will capture you on land, at sea, in the air. We will meet force with force. And since you are invading our country, you will be tried in military tribunals.

Second, our country has long been a haven for political refugees, those fleeing violence and tyranny. It is a proud American tradition. But, for the moment, we must pause the process until order is restored at the border. And so, until further notice, the United States will not accept refugee applications from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti. We will not accept any refugee applications at our southern border. This is a painful, difficult decision. We realize this will cause human suffering, but we have no choice. Cubans and Haitians, especially, have found shelter here for 60 years, and they have worked hard to become excellent members of our society. We will continue to accept refugee applications from Iraq and Afghanistan, especially those who can prove they supported our armed forces during the wars there. I look forward to the day when Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela take steps to join the community of free nations—which will surely diminish this embarrassing tide of terrorized humans fleeing their regimes. But, for now, to those suffering oppression in those nations, the message is clear: You must not try to come here.

Third, Mexico is a great nation. It is our most important trading partner…but our least reliable neighbor. It has been engaged in a constant battle against drug cartels. It is not winning that war. We want to help. And we must take action. The death toll from fentanyl alone has quintupled in the past five years—more than 100,000 deaths in 2022 alone, the equivalent of an airliner with 300 passengers crashing every day. This is a death toll that dwarfs the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Too much of that fentanyl—and other drugs—is coming across our southern border. And so, I have a personal message for the President of Mexico, Andres Miguel Lopez Obrador: We are willing to share intelligence with you about cartel operations. We are willing to help you destroy the drug labs and fortresses run by the cartels. But if we find evidence—as we have in the past—that elements of your government are warning the cartels, or cooperating with them, we may find it necessary to take occasional, limited, discrete action on our own. This is not a step we want to take. But the cartels have become a threat to our national security—as real as any terrorist threat to our homeland. We respect your sovereignty, but ours is being challenged. We hope you’ll join us in this effort. But we are prepared to proceed without you.

Fourth, instability in other parts of Central and South America has become a threat to our national security as well. There are civil wars, drug wars in Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras. The political situation in Guatemala is shaky. We, as a nation, need to pay more attention to those problems. We need to pay more attention to our neighborhood. We can not retreat from the rest of the world, but more of our best diplomats and military assets need to be deployed in the western hemisphere. We need to increase joint efforts to train and deploy police forces in the region. I am proposing tonight an Inter-American Policy Academy, an elite institution with students and teachers from both North and Latin America—and I am offering the government of Ecuador, and others involved in active wars against the cartels, any immediate assistance you may need in those struggles, including military police advisers.

Let me be frank. The United States has not always been the best neighbor. We have acted unilaterally, and illegally, to influence and overthrow governments in the region—often foolishly, when our own national security was not at stake. But it is at stake now. We can not tolerate an insecure border. We can not tolerate the narco-criminality that is killing our people. We will take action to defend ourselves. That action will be measured and prudent. We hope Mexico and our other neighbors will join us in this effort. But let me repeat: if you are not willing to do so, we will act alone.

The same goes for our friends in the Republican Party. We hope you’ll stop playing political games and join us in a bipartisan effort to secure our nation and to create a new immigration system that seals the border but welcomes more legal immigrants, especially those with advanced skills. The choice is yours. The American people deserve better, far better, than you are offering—which, so far as I can tell, is empty, vicious rhetoric.

Good Night and God Bless Our Troops.