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Biden's legal aid for migrants could cost taxpayers 'billions,' said ex-border official


FILE - A pair of migrant families from Brazil wait to be processed by U.S. Border Patrol agents after passing through a gap in the border wall from Mexico in Yuma, Ariz., Thursday, June 10, 2021, to seek asylum.  (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia, File)
FILE - A pair of migrant families from Brazil wait to be processed by U.S. Border Patrol agents after passing through a gap in the border wall from Mexico in Yuma, Ariz., Thursday, June 10, 2021, to seek asylum. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia, File)
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WASHINGTON (TND) — Nearly two million migrants crossed the southern border last year, according to Customs and Border Patrol. The Biden administration is gearing up to launch the Legal Access at the Border program, aimed at providing legal services to migrants. The program will help prepare migrants for the immigration legal process in border towns in California, Arizona and Texas.

“What this means is someone can intentionally break into our southwest border, enter our country illegally, and what this administration says now is that we're going to give them free legal counsel,” said former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. “Of course, the cost of that is going to be placed directly on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.”

Morgan claims if the program is expanded, it could cost taxpayers “billions of dollars.”

“They're going out to a select group of attorneys; they're basically creating an administration-driven slush fund for these attorneys that will have a never-ending client base,” said Morgan. “What we shouldn't do is place that burden financially on the backs of taxpayers.”

Fourteen migrants on terror watchlists were stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents last year, according to former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott.

“This is not just about illegal immigration. This is first and foremost about border security,” said Morgan. “You have large areas of the border wide open, unpatrolled, un-secure — what does then happen? It makes us vulnerable to every event we face from outside our borders, including a national security threat.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently spoke about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement reform.

“We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior. For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen’s unlawful presence in the United States will not by itself be a basis for the initiation of the enforcement action. This is a profound shift away from the prior administration’s indiscriminate enforcement,” said Mayorkas.

In response, Morgan called for Mayorkas’ impeachment.

“In his own words, he said that to be here unlawfully is not enough to actually enforce the law against someone,” said Morgan. “I'm almost at a loss for words. That statement alone should be grounds for him being impeached.”

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