Speaker Urges Biden to Take Executive Action on Border

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is pushing for President Joe Biden to take executive action on border security, including restarting construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall and implementing stricter immigration enforcement policies.

"While a bipartisan group of Senators has begun extensive negotiations over the past few weeks to try to find a compromise, they have not yet been able to finalize an agreement," Johnson wrote in a letter sent Thursday to the White House.

"Statutory reforms designed to restore operational control at our southern border must be enacted, but the crisis at our southern border has deteriorated to such an extent that significant action can wait no longer. It must start now, and it must start with you."

Johnson added: "I urge you to immediately take executive actions available to you under existing immigration laws to stem the record tide of illegal immigration."

Customs and Border Protection on Thursday said a surge of migrants using new means to cross the southern border has the group financially stretched.

"The encounter levels we are currently seeing across the southwest border are presenting a serious challenge to the men and women of [Customs and Border Protection]," said Troy A. Miller, the agency's acting commissioner.

About 12,600 migrants were intercepted Monday and Tuesday on the border.

Johnson in the letter also urged Biden to utilize Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to regain operational control of the border.

That provision empowers the President to "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate" if the President "finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States."

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