Biggest crisis since 9/11? Republicans sound alarm on Biden border policy as COVID spreads

As the number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border reaches a 20-year high and COVID-19 cases consequently spike, Republican lawmakers are blasting the Biden administration for the converging security and public health crises.

July saw the highest number of illegal immigrants crossing the border in over 20 years, with a total of 210,000. Simultaneously, fewer MS-13 gang members have been caught crossing the border this year than in each of the previous three years, and COVID-positive migrants are flooding the Texas border town of McAllen.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) warned Tuesday that the spiraling chaos on the southern border posed a critical threat to U.S. national security.

"I believe this is the biggest national security threat that we've seen in years," Steube told the John Solomon Reports podcast. "Twenty years ago, we had September 11. This is just as big, but the mainstream media is not talking about it. The White House isn't doing anything about it. Democrats in Congress want to encourage this behavior because for some reason they want as many illegals into this country as humanly possible in the next two to four years while Biden's president."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), meanwhile, wrote a letter to the Department of Justice on Tuesday expressing his concern over the low number of apprehensions of MS-13, asking what the DOJ task force was doing about it or if it was still in existence. On Wednesday, the DOJ announced that four alleged members of MS-13 were being indicted.

On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) excoriated the Biden administration for facilitating the spread of COVID-19 through lax border enforcement policies.

"The Biden administration is releasing COVID into our nation at a more rapid level than the Chinese even did," he told the John Solomon Reports podcast, "because they are allowing hundreds of thousands of people, that we don't know what's going on with, across our border every month, and then transporting them."

The Biden administration is worse than China because they're transporting COVID-positive illegal immigrants into the U.S., Rosendale argued, adding, "These folks aren't doing it themselves."

The border town of McAllen, Texas, has seen more than 7,000 COVID-positive illegal immigrants released into its jurisdiction since February, with 1,500 of them entering in just the past week.

"Joe Biden likes to talk about this pandemic, well I'll tell you what, the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was a superspreader event, because their open border is endangering not just the people of Texas but people all across the country," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News.