Border Patrol union clarifies support for border bill after Biden SOTU callout
‘President Biden has put us in this situation,’ National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told Fox News after the president mentioned the group's endorsement of the bipartisan border bill during the State of the Union.
The head of the National Border Patrol Council believes President Biden "slapped every American in the face" during Thursday’s State of the Union address.
It took Biden roughly 40 minutes to get to the issue of immigration, and Brandon Judd said he didn’t believe his remarks were up to par.
"He didn't address what he could do. All he did was blame it on President Trump. But look, I have the opportunity to speak with President Trump. I know that the reason why he didn't support that bill has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with — the president understands it from day one, he could step into office and do a lot more than what that bill does," Judd said on Fox News' special coverage of the State of the Union.
"He also understands that if a bill were to be passed today, that there would be no appetite to pass a better bill when he's in office."
President Biden delivers the State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Last month, the Senate failed to pass a supplemental spending agreement that included aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as an ambitious border security and immigration package that drew widespread opposition from conservative Republicans in both chambers.
But while the Biden administration and negotiators talked the bill up as a tough but fair way to tackle the border crisis, Republicans in the House immediately declared it a non-starter and conservative opposition in the Senate quickly stacked up. More than 20 Republican lawmakers in the upper chamber argued the provisions would not sufficiently reduce the historic number of illegal migrant crossings, and warned it would normalize record-high levels of illegal immigration.
During his State of the Union address, Biden called the bill "a tougher set of border security reforms than we've ever seen," which drew groans from Republicans in the crowd.
"Oh, you don't think so?" Biden said. "Oh, you don't like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill? I'll be darned. That's amazing."
"Look at the facts, I know you know how to read," the president quipped when Republicans continued to voice their displeasure with his description of the failed legislation.
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President Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Shawn Thew/Pool via AP)
Judd said Trump feels he would have actually hurt the country by supporting the bill. He also believes that the bill only received the support that it did because of the situation President Biden has put the country in. The National Border Patrol Council supported the bill, but Judd wanted Americans to know it’s simply because of how bad things are under Biden.
"He has put us in the situation that we've never thought that we would ever be in. We're apprehending seven times more people than what we normally apprehend. We have more than 10 times the got-aways. We've got more fentanyl coming into this country than we've ever seen before. We've got more dangerous criminals coming into this country than we've ever seen before. We've got terrorists on the terrorist watch list that are coming into the country," Judd said.
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"He didn't address any of that," he added. "So, he's put us in a position that we're going to accept anything that is better than the status quo, and that bill is better than the status quo."
Judd said it would be "completely disingenuous" for Biden to blame Congress when he has the executive authority to "do more than the border bill would ever do."
"He’s not going to do it, because if he did something like that, he would be admitting that over the past three years, it’s been his fault that we have this crisis at the border," Judd said. "He didn't announce anything today that is actually going to help us secure the border, so that was a slap in the face of all America."
Migrants arrive at a makeshift camp after crossing the nearby border with Mexico near the Jacumba Hot Springs in San Diego on Feb. 23. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.