House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) led a delegation of 14 Committee members to Yuma, Arizona for a field hearing on the Biden Border Crisis. During the two-day CODEL, members met with border patrol agents, toured the Yuma Regional Medical Center, and visited the Yuma Community Food Bank to discuss the impact of illegal immigration on community resources.
WATCH: Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) join Hannity to discuss their findings during the Judiciary Committee field hearing in Yuma, Arizona.
- Chairman Jordan: "On day one, Joe Biden said no more wall, no more remain in Mexico, no more deportation, and as a result of that, we got all those facts and figures you just cited Sean. But what we also got today what we heard from people here in Yuma is how it overwhelmed their school system, their hospital system, their first responders, their law enforcement, [and] border patrol. The cost to the folks here on the border and across our border, and maybe most importantly now, that's coming across the country. It's coming to Florida. It's coming to Ohio. It's coming to New York City. Even Mayor Eric Adams said they can't take any more. That's why this is so serious, and that's why we got to change things and pass legislation out of our Committee and out of the House which we plan to do."
- Rep. Gaetz: "Tens of illegal immigrants show up in Martha's Vineyard, and they go crazy as if they're being overwhelmed. Yet here in Yuma, Arizona, we see a community on the frontlines of an invasion. And American babies in their most frail moments in their first days and hours are being crowded out of neonatal intensive care units by migrants."
READ: The Cleveland Plain Dealer: Republicans led by Ohio’s Jim Jordan survey Arizona’s border woes
- Yuma County Sheriff Leon N. Wilmot told a standing-room only crowd that U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in his county soared from roughly 40 a day to over 1,000 a day after Joe Biden took over as president. Wilmot attributed the boost to changes in immigration policy under Biden, such as stopping a past requirement that immigrants remain in Mexico while they wait to hear whether they'll be admitted to the United States.
- Wilmot said his county supplies 90% of the United States' leafy greens in the winter, and its farm fields are endangered by "tons of trash, pharmaceuticals, and biological waste" being left by those who illegally cross the Colorado River. He said its emergency management agency has spent $70,000 to lease portable toilets to keep immigrants from defecating in crops, Wilmot said.
- Wilmot said the price tag for migrants being illegally smuggled by the cartels begins at $6,000 per person. Cartels use social media to recruit juveniles to smuggle humans and narcotics into the country because the federal government won't charge them with a crime because of their age, he said.
- "History is screaming this warning at us. Countries that cannot or will not enforce their borders simply aren’t around very long. We can’t and we won’t let that become the epitaph of the American Republic.”
- The main hospital in Yuma, Arizona, put a price tag on the border crisis, with its officials telling lawmakers Thursday that it spent $26 million last year on uncompensated care for the wave of illegal immigrants who threaten to swamp the facility.
- Dr. Robert Trenschel, president and CEO of Yuma Regional Medical Center, said migrants are particularly stressful patients, needing everything from dialysis to heart surgery to prenatal care — often the first such care pregnant women have ever received. "And when babies are born, they may have to stay in the intensive care unit for a month because of the complications of their situation."
- Dr. Trenschel said discharging migrants is also tougher because they have to provide for a safe discharge, which can mean buying them medical equipment and flying them to relatives.
- The migrants are crowding out Yuma's residents, competing for beds in the emergency room or forcing delays in elective surgery because doctors are needed to care for the migrants.
- Thursday marks the first official congressional hearing at the U.S.-Mexico border regarding the ongoing immigration crisis. GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee traveled to Yuma for the hearing, but Democratic members announced last week they would be boycotting the trip, calling it a political stunt.
- Democrats accused the GOP of not consulting them about the trip, but Republicans on the Judiciary Committee said they had consulted the Democrats three weeks before the hearing. Border Patrol agents based in Yuma expressed their disappointment and frustration to Townhall about the Committee's Democrats not bothering to show up to an official hearing.
- "It was expected that Democrats would not show up to the border. I don’t think they want to see what’s going on and the damage they have done. The Democratic Party has not offered real solutions, just unrealistic promises," one agent said. "Democrats have been a no show at the border for two years. What else is new?" another agent quipped.
- Local 2595 President Rafael Rivera, which represents Border Patrol agents in Yuma, said it was "sad" Democrats did not want to come down and listen to the agents about what they have been facing during the past two years. He noted that while Senators Mark Kelly (D) and Kyrsten Sinema (I) have toured the border in Arizona, no other Democrats have bothered to reach out to him to find out what is going on in Yuma.
- Chris Clem was the Yuma Sector's chief patrol agent from 2020 to 2022 before retiring. He was in charge of the Yuma Sector when it experienced its historic highs of illegal immigrants crossing into Arizona, when it has been one of the less busier sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border pre-Biden administration. Sources told Townhall at the time the border was not being patrolled because most agents were pulled from the field in order to process the thousands of illegal immigrants who surrendered themselves to them on a daily basis.
- "I think that it should've been a bipartisan hearing down here because in order to solve a border security and immigration crisis, we need to involve the community, the experts, the business community. That takes everybody and so that means everybody that is represented and their representatives need to be here," Clem stated.
- "Border security should be a nonpartisan issue, but immigration is a socioeconomic issue and that's why it requires all sides of the aisle to address," he continued, adding he believes more hearings about the crisis should take place at the border.
Original source can be found here
