As President Joe Biden prepares to address Congress in his annual State of the Union on Thursday, House Republicans are preparing to hammer the president on what they view as the most pressing issue facing the country: illegal immigration and securing the southern border.
In the hours leading up to the joint address, Republicans were seen wearing pins reading “Stop the Biden border crisis” and “Say her name: Laken Riley,” referring to the University of Georgia nursing student who was killed earlier this year. Other Republicans have challenged Biden directly to acknowledge Riley’s death during his speech.
“We’re gonna get a lot of blame-shifting. He’s not going to address his part in the border crisis,” Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner. “You’re not going to hear Laken Riley’s name.”
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), a co-sponsor of the Laken Riley Act that passed on Thursday, said that even if Biden did mention Riley’s name, “What in the world could he say about her death?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he attempts to carry off some maudlin expression of faux sympathy, but he can’t really deliver that in a way that is convincing because he’s doing nothing to change the conditions that he alone is responsible for having created,” Bishop said, referring to Biden. “He’s creating chaos in the United States in consequence, and that young lady’s dead purely because of his decisions.”
Riley’s death has become a flashpoint for Republican lawmakers after it was discovered the suspect arrested in her death is a Venezuelan immigrant who was arrested in 2022 on charges of illegally crossing the border but later released into the country. Her killing has also acted as a catalyst for Republicans to bring border security to the center stage, calling on Biden to pass their signature border bill that passed the House last year.
“This is outrageous, and it’s out of control. But what has the president done about it? He’s complained [and] he said Congress needs to do something about it,” said Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN). “He won’t even entertain what Republicans sent over to the Senate back in May, which is a simple bill.”
Biden has increasingly turned his focus toward the southern border in recent months, pressing the Senate to pass a supplemental funding request that would provide additional funding to the southern border in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel. However, that effort fell flat in the Senate, prompting the president to shift the blame to GOP lawmakers for failing to address the surge in illegal immigration.
Several House Republicans said they expect Biden to repeat those talking points during his address on Thursday as a way to boost himself politically, but some GOP members are not looking for a campaign speech.
“I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about what cycle we’re in, when the presidential election is. I just want to hear solutions,” said House GOP Vice Chairman Blake Moore (R-UT) of Biden’s border security policy. “If it takes a political year for him to try to do something about it, great — because we need improvements at the border.”
Biden visited the southern border last week alongside Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to meet with border agents amid the surge in immigration. However, Republicans denounced the visit as a political stunt, claiming the president planned the event to coincide with former President Donald Trump’s trip to another section of the border that same day.
“Biden’s visit to the border was a slap in the face to all South Texans and really all Americans. Why? Because he failed to show up when we had over 30,000 illegal immigrants crossing our border on a daily basis,” said Rep. Monica de la Cruz (R-TX).
Cruz’s comments come as she prepares to offer the Spanish-language Republican rebuttal to Biden’s address, during which she said she will push the president on his border security policies.
“My message is going to be about standing up for our border patrol customs agents, the need for national security, and securing our borders,” she said. “I’m going to talk about how the Biden administration has destroyed and is destroying the American dream.”
Moore said he’ll take whatever political pressure is needed to spurn Biden to admit he could be doing more to address border security, whether it’s a trip to the border or a line in his State of the Union speech.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“If he would just be willing to say, ‘Okay, you know what, I made a mistake. There were good policies under the Trump-Pence administration, and maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to react and just create and remove all that stuff,’” the Utah congressman said of Biden.
The State of the Union comes as border security has become a top political issue ahead of the 2024 election, with both Biden and Trump seizing on the topic as they traverse the campaign trail. Roughly 140,000 migrants were apprehended along border ports of entry last month, an increase from the 124,000 that were encountered the month before, according to data from Customs and Border Protection.