President Biden declined to restore the most effective Donald Trump-era border policy — and blamed America’s southern neighbor for the massive flood of migrants into the US, House Speaker Mike Johnson recalled Thursday.
Johnson (R-La.) told The Post in an interview that Biden, 81, refused to reverse course and reinstate his predecessor’s “Remain in Mexico” policy even after migrant crossings began shattering records in late 2023 and into 2024.
“‘Just do “Remain in Mexico” again,’” Johnson, 52, recounted his entreaties to the president. “I begged Biden myself, personally, to do that. And he said he wouldn’t.”
“‘It’s complicated,’” Biden responded flatly, in Johnson’s retelling. “‘Mexico doesn’t want that.’”
“I said, ‘You can make it less complicated — you just show some leadership,’” the speaker went on. “‘With all due respect, sir, you’re the president of the United States. It doesn’t matter what Mexico wants. You tell them.’”
The Trump administration rolled out “Remain in Mexico” to make migrants await their immigration court hearings south of the US border, rather than in the American interior.
By contrast, the Biden administration released more than 85% of migrants who crossed the border into the US, jamming up the immigration court docket with an all-time high of 3 million cases and forcing some asylum seekers to wait up to a decade for hearings.
“‘Things have changed,’” was all Biden said when Johnson asked him to tighten border policy.
“Yeah, they’ve changed, all right — I mean, by my count, I think we’ve got more than 16 million illegal aliens in the country in the last four years, and we’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of our lives,” the speaker said of the fateful move.
Then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he respected US sovereignty when asked in March about his relationship with Biden.
“Every time I speak with President Biden, the first thing he says to me is that our relationship must be on an equal footing,” López Obrador told CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
The House speaker and other Republicans have said law enforcement officials credit “Remain in Mexico” with reducing the heavy influx of asylum seekers and other border crossers by as much as 70% during the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris also declined to take responsibility for the policy’s outcomes during a tense interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
“Looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate ‘Remain in Mexico’ at the beginning of your administration?” Baier asked.
Harris, 59, deflected, pointing to at least two immigration bills that failed to clear even one chamber of Congress, faced Democratic opposition and still would have allowed up to 1.8 million migrants into the US per year.
Unlike their predecessor, Biden and Harris have supported a fast-tracked asylum process that has brought at least 6 million known migrants into the US. Nearly 2 million “gotaways” have also evaded apprehension while coming into the country.
Hundreds of thousands of asylum cases have since been terminated by their administration, in a move essentially granting “mass amnesty” to clear docket backlogs.
“I’ve made multiple trips to the border, at the hot spots from San Diego all the way down to southeast Texas,” Johnson told The Post Thursday. “And the stories [law enforcement] tell are they haven’t even been allowed to count even people they saw.”
“[GOP Rep.] Andy Barr from Kentucky was there on a trip about three months ago and he was just exasperated,” Johnson said. “The Border Patrol agents … they saw a group of nine young men, military age in capability and by appearance, and they watched them, they were about 20 yards away … and they walked in, into the woods.”
“They’re [the lawmakers are] standing by this group of Border Patrol agents. And they said, ‘Are you going to do something?’” the Republican went on. “And then they [the migrants] disappear into the woods. And they said, ‘Well, so how do you account for those nine? … Those nine, those are your “gotaways?”‘”
“They [the border agents] said, ‘No, they don’t. They don’t make the list.’”
“What do you mean?” the confused GOPers asked, according to Johnson. “They got away.”
“We can’t count them unless we unless we can actually visibly see them disappear on the horizon and know that they didn’t turn around and cross back over the border,” Johnson said the border agents informed the lawmakers.
“We have dangerous people and terrorists and all that — and that’s why the FBI director’s testified multiple times, all the red lights are flashing,” Johnson said, referring to the recent indictment of an Afghan national in Oklahoma accused of plotting a terror attack on US soil for Election Day 2024.
“The enemy is among us. Here,” the House speaker warned, slamming Biden, Harris and cabinet officials for permitting the high-risk entries.
“The border catastrophe was orchestrated by Harris and by [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, which is why we took the extreme step of impeaching him in the House,” Johnson said, “because desperate times called for desperate measures.”