Gov. Reynolds Joins Letter Calling on President Biden to Release Information on Relocated Illegal Immigrants

Letter

Dear Mr. President,

The crisis at the southern border extends to every state.

As a result of your policies which incentivize illegal immigration, our states are carrying the burden of both the years-long surge in illegal border crossings and cartels' coordinated trafficking of drugs and human beings. States are on the front lines, working around-theclock responding to the effects of this crisis: shelters are full, food pantries empty, law enforcement strained, and aid workers exhausted. As governors, we call on you to provide honest, accurate, detailed information on where the migrants admitted at the southern border are being relocated in the United States, in addition to
comprehensive data on asylum claim timelines and qualification rates, and successful deportations. We ask for this information immediately, but also regularly as the crisis at the southern border continues.

Your administration can no longer ignore simple facts that threaten our citizens' public safety and strain their public resources. Since you have taken office, there have been over 5.8 million illegal crossings at the southern border. In addition, your Customs and Border Protection agency estimates 1.6 million crossers have evaded apprehension. Even illegal crossings at the northern border have increased exponentially under your administration, in some areas by nearly 850%. In the past two years, 244 people on the terrorist watchlist were stopped trying to cross the southern border--an all-time record. Absent transparency from your administration, though, we cannot know how many terrorists have evaded capture and are now freely moving about the country. Your administration admitted under oath to Congress that cartels prioritize the southern border as a major corridor and exploit it daily for human and narcotics trafficking. Our country cannot tolerate 100,000
deaths every year from a fentanyl crisis fueled by cartels pouring the fatal drug into our communities, nor can it tolerate the horrors of human trafficking and the lifelong scars it leaves on victims.

Though we remain committed to addressing these issues, States cannot afford to respond to a challenge of such magnitude while the federal government continues to turn a blind eye. Analysts estimate the annual net cost of illegal immigration for the United States at the federal, state, and local levels is at least $150.7 billion. State are forced to provide financial, educational, and medical support to migrants entering our country illegally-- support that is skyrocketing in cost due to record inflation and the unprecedented influx of migrants into our

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states. The financial impact on the states is staggering, and it is our hardworking citizens who shoulder that burden.

This is not a partisan issue. Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams stated, "This is not a New York City problem. This is a national problem….[Funding for the influx of migrants to New York City is] going to come from our schools' services. It's going to come from our streets. It's going to come from what we provide to children." Our fellow governor, Democrat Maura Healey of Massachusetts, declared a state of emergency due to the number of migrants in her state, and described the federal government's mismanagement of immigration as "a federal crisis of inaction."

As we have made clear repeatedly, every state is now a border state.

As governors, we call on you and your administration to relay immediately accurate, detailed, thorough data and information to the states about who is crossing the southern border illegally, where they are relocating, how the federal government is processing their asylum applications, and whether they are being deported successfully. Without such information, we cannot fulfill our fundamental duties to protect our citizens while providing our communities with appropriate services.

Sincerely,

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