Southern West Virginia News

WASHINGTON, D.C. - On May 11, 2023, Congresswoman Miller (R-WV) released the following statement after the passage of H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, and ahead of the expiration of Title 42. House Republicans introduced H.R. 2 which is the strongest border security bill produced by Congress in decades and will help solve the crisis at the southern border.  

"For the majority of President Trump's time in office, we didn’t have Title 42 - and yet there was no border crisis like we have today," said Congresswoman Miller. "Our southern border is wide open because the Biden Administration refuses to put policies in place that help Americans and instead, they want chaos and fear to implement more government control. House Republicans have passed a commonsense solution that will put America first by building the wall, increasing pay for border patrol agents, and improving the asylum process. We owe it to our border patrol agents, our children, and the future of the United States to stop Joe Biden’s border crisis."                

Background:

• H.R. 2 bill will restart the construction of the border wall, deploy technology to the border, and increase the number of border patrol agents employed.
• Drug cartels have been running drug trafficking operations at the southern border and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has seized over 14,000 pounds of fentanyl—enough to kill over 3.1 billion people.
• In 2020, 1,000 West Virginians were killed by fentanyl. 
• West Virginia saw the highest rate of fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021, with 66 deaths per 100,000 people due to fentanyl overdoses.
• President Biden halted the construction of the border wall and since then, there have been over 5 million illegal crossings at the southern border.
• Title 42 was enacted by the Trump Administration as a public health order that allowed U.S. enforcement officials to prevent illegal migrants from crossing the southern border due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• President Biden ended the public health emergency, therefore causing Title 42 to expire. 

Original source can be found here.