Authored by Mark Green via RealClearPolitics,

Upon being inaugurated, one of the responsibilities Joe Biden and Kamala Harris assumed was to keep the American homeland secure and safeguard our sovereign borders. Nearly four years later, looking at the catastrophic, unprecedented border crisis that has unfolded on their watch, can anyone say with a straight face they have fulfilled that obligation?

The answer, unequivocally, is no – and Americans are the ones paying the price.

From the beginning, Biden, Harris, and other key officials in their administration were determined to end President Donald Trump’s effective border security policies – regardless of the consequences. They also refused to enforce long-standing immigration laws that administrations of both parties have enforced.

According to a new report by my committee, the incoming Biden-Harris team was warned by current and former Department of Homeland Security law enforcement during the presidential transition of what would happen if they embarked on this path – and yet, they chose to do so anyway.

This dereliction of duty has led to disastrous outcomes in the realm of public safety. Under Biden and Harris’ leadership, our borders are wide open and ripe for exploitation, and interior enforcement has fallen off a cliff. The numbers bear this out.

Since Fiscal Year 2021, the Border Patrol has recorded more than 55,000 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal histories, compared to just around 22,000 from FY2017-2020. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens has said that “[h]ardened criminals often hide in smuggled migrant groups.” According to one Border Patrol deputy chief patrol agent, “any crime that can be committed, we do encounter people who have committed them.”

The problem of criminal aliens is not just limited to the border. Between FY2017-2020, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 480,000 aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges on their record. By contrast, in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, such arrests dropped to just around 165,000, despite the historic numbers of illegal aliens crossing the border. Likewise,  the Trump administration removed more than 604,000 criminal aliens from FY2017-2020, while the Biden-Harris administration only removed around 158,000 from FY2021-2023 (ICE data for FY2024 has not yet been publicly released). Additionally, removals of gang members last year were down 40% from their peak during the Trump administration.

These numbers have dropped because the Biden-Harris administration tied the hands of law enforcement. According to guidance issued by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in September 2021, ICE personnel cannot “rely on the fact of conviction … alone” in deciding whether to detain a suspected criminal alien, a statement that one federal judge ruled in 2022 “flips the presumption of detention on its head.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that ICE’s Non-Detained Docket has exploded to well over 7.4 million individuals – up from just around 3.2 million at the end of FY2020. Among these millions are nearly 650,000 aliens with criminal backgrounds, including more than 13,000 convicted murderers, 15,000 with sexual assault convictions, and more than 62,000 convicted of assault.

The consequences of this policy of non-enforcement have been deadly. One need only ask the families of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and many others whose lives have been taken or otherwise irrevocably shattered at the hands of those here illegally.

It is not just criminal aliens now in their communities that should keep Americans awake at night. A historic number of individuals on the terrorist watchlist (392) have been caught illegally crossing our borders since FY2021, compared to just 14 between FY2017 and 2020.

Worse still, the Biden-Harris administration has actually released at least 99 of these individuals into the interior. Last year, Mayorkas refused to answer direct questions from a member of my committee when asked if DHS has a policy to detain an illegal alien found to be on the terrorist watchlist until they are removed.

Last year, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray told my committee, “I think greater fidelity about who is coming into this country and how they are getting in is essential.” Unfortunately, that’s not happening under Biden and Harris. In the haunting words of one Border Patrol agent, “I wanted to get into Border Patrol and protect from terrorists. And it’s like, well, I probably let terrorists in the country.”

These numbers only reflect those the Border Patrol has managed to catch. We have no idea how many criminals or potential terrorists have been among the roughly 2 million known gotaways on Biden and Harris’ watch.

And as we learned earlier this month following the arrest of an Afghan national charged with plotting an Election Day terrorist attack in Oklahoma, insufficiently vetted noncitizens are actively plotting harm against Americans – from inside our own borders.

America simply cannot afford any more of this.

Rep. Mark E. Green, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, represents Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.