AUGUSTA – Maine GOP Chair Doctor Demi Kouzounas released the following statement regarding Governor Greg Abbott and Governor Doug Ducey’s letter to all U.S. Governors:

“The Biden-Harris administration has been a complete failure with handling the crisis at the southern border,” said Chair Dr. Demi Kouzounas. “While Biden’s ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris refuses to even visit the border, Governors along the border are desperately fighting to keep their states, citizens, and our country safe. Governor Abbott and Governor Ducey’s letter is a plea to the rest of the country to finally take this issue seriously.”

“With each passing day we reach new highs of illegal immigrants, drugs, and guns crossing our border. If the Biden administration and the federal government won’t keep us safe, it is up to each state to help. The Maine Republican Party is calling on Janet Mills to assist these states and play an active role in stopping this crisis and help keep America safe.”

BACKGROUND

• Illegal border crossings are now at a 21-year high, but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris continue to ignore the crisis they created at our southern border.
  • Despite this urgent crisis, Biden’s budget would cut border security funding – now is the time to empower the border security agents who keep us safe.
    
• U.S. intelligence officials are sounding the alarm that Biden’s open border policies are creating a terrorist threat.
• Harris is trying to hide her failures on the border from the public and the media – she has refused to hold a news conference on the topic, and still hasn’t visited the border herself since she was put in charge.
  
• Under the Biden Administration, thousands of illegal migrants are being flown across the country without photo ID and without negative COVID-19 tests.
  • Every adult American citizen who flies on commercial aircraft needs to show ID to board. Apparently, the same rules don’t apply to illegal migrants with Joe Biden in charge.
    
• Just a few months into this year, Customs and Border Protection has seized more deadly fentanyl at the southern border than they seized in all of 2020.
  • Border policy is a matter of life and death – tens of thousands of Americans die from fentanyl overdoses every year.
    
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported less than three thousand people in April – an all-time low – in spite of record numbers of illegal migrant encounters at the border.
  
• Biden and Harris inherited a strong and secure border from the Trump Administration and in less than 200 days in office, they have already reversed the progress of the past 4 years.