The Biden Border Crisis: Environmental and Humanitarian Consequences

By Andrew R. Arthur on May 27, 2021

The situation at the border has reached crisis, if not humanitarian and national security disaster, levels.

Loopholes in the law and policies implemented by the current administration have encouraged migrants — and in particular unaccompanied alien children, their parents, and adult migrants with children traveling in family units — to enter the United States, in the expectation of remaining in this country permanently.

The situation at the border has created severe — and extremely deleterious — consequences for those migrants themselves, Border Patrol and other law-enforcement personnel, the people of the United States, and the environment (both at the border and in the interior of the United States).

As Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) explained at a May 13 Senate hearing: “The first step in solving any problem is admitting that you have one.” It is beyond time for Congress and the administration to realize that there is a problem at the border, and to respond with something more than apprehending, releasing, and dispersing migrants into communities across the United States.


Download a PDF of the full written testimony here.