As pro-Hamas riots outside the U.S. Capitol faded into the night Wednesday, Alaska’s U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola joined all other House Democrats in voting against moving forward with a resolution “strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”
The resolution passed 210 to 202, along party lines, with Republicans prevailing. The final vote would move forward.
Although illegal aliens are trafficking large amounts of deadly drugs into Alaska Native villages, Peltola did not wish to be on the record condemning the Biden-Harris policies of the past four years, which have led to a large spike in drug-related overdoses and deaths, as well as societal breakdown in Native villages. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alaska experienced the largest percent increase in drug overdose deaths of any state between 2022 and 2023. Fentanyl-related overdose deaths among Alaskans increased by nearly 75 percent in one year.
Having slept on it, Peltola voted yes on Wednesday morning, agreeing to condemn Biden, who she once endorsed for president, and Harris, who she has recently refused to endorse for president. It was a 180-degree vote flip in 12 hours.
Five other Democrats voted in favor of condemning the administration’s border policy, including Peltola’s two co-chairs of the Antifa-Rural Blue Dog Democrat Caucus — Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez of Washington. Peltola and Perez are in tough positions for reelection this year.
Since Biden-Harris took office in 2021, illegal border crossings have soared and overwhelmed the capabilities of tribal, local, and state governments. In December of 2023, illegal crossings from Mexico reached an all-time high.
In the first six months of the federal fiscal year of 2024, more than 1.7 million illegals have entered the United States, more than twice the population of Alaska.
According to the American Immigration Council, Alaska’s estimated 5,000 undocumented immigrants comprised 13 percent of the overall Alaska immigrant population, and were one out of every 100 Alaskans in 2016.
By 2023, that number reached as high as 11,260 illegal immigrants living in Alaska, according to the Alaska Department of Law. These illegal immigrants cost the state more than $72 million a year.
That led to a lawsuit by Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and 19 other attorneys general against the Department of Homeland Security for failing to secure the border.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS or Department), under the false pretense of preventing aliens from unlawfully crossing the border between the ports of entry, has effectively created a new visa program— without the formalities of legislation from Congress—by announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be ‘paroled’ into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization,” the lawsuit reads.
The Department’s parole power is exceptionally limited, having been curtailed by Congress multiple times, and can be used “only on a case-by- case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” But the Biden-Harris Administration’s new “parole” program allows aliens in their home countries to obtain the benefit of being able to obtain advance authorization to enter the United States—despite no other basis in law for them doing so.
The parole program established by the Biden Administration fails each of the federal law’s limiting factors: It is not case-by-case, is not for urgent humanitarian reasons, and advances no significant public benefit. Instead, it amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so. This flouts, rather than follows, the clear limits imposed by Congress.
Biden and Harris did not engage in notice-and-comment rule-making under the Administrative Procedure Act, substituting instead its unilateral judgment to bring into the United States hundreds of thousands of aliens who otherwise have no other authority to enter.
Tribal leaders will continue to look the other way as their people are dying and families are being destroyed, but hey at least their pockets are fat.