CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wrote a letter to President Joe Biden urging his administration to allow Texas’s efforts to secure portions of the U.S. border with Mexico to continue.
In the letter, Morrisey told Biden the administration has failed miserably on immigration.
“This administration’s approach is callous and continues to endanger the lives of millions of Americans — there’s no excuse for the lack of security,” Morrisey wrote in the January 29 letter. “Gov. Greg Abbott is just doing his job protecting the citizens of Texas.
“Because you cannot or will not meet your responsibility to protect our nation, I urge you to at least support — rather than obstruct — the State of Texas’s efforts to fill the void.”
In his four-page letter, Morrisey also said the problems of Biden’s open-border policy are human trafficking and the fentanyl coming into the country.
“It’s a matter of national security,” Morrisey wrote. “Here you have the fentanyl coming from China and being pedaled through the southern border, human trafficking, and the potential of terrorists infiltrating the country.
“These drugs are flowing into the heartland from across the southern border.”
Morrisey urged Biden to work with the states to resolve the problem.
“How many of our people must die from foreign-sourced drugs before your administration gets serious about meeting its obligation to secure our borders?” the AG asked the president. “When will enough be enough?”
Morrisey also joined another letter signed by 25 other AGs and Arizona legislative leaders raising concerns with Biden’s border policy.
In 2022, Morrisey visited the border in Texas with AGs from 12 other states for a briefing regarding issues at the border as guests of Abbott. They also met with officials in the border cities of McAllen, Edinburg, Weslaco and Rio Grande City.
“Words really can’t adequately describe what all of us experienced the last couple of days and the horrific catastrophe we’re seeing down here at the border," Morrisey said then. "Not only undocumented aliens streaming across the border, human trafficking, but fentanyl.
“These drugs are flowing into the heartland from across the southern border. Bodies are starting to pile up as a result of the utter failure of this administration. And it’s time they do something about it.
"In West Virginia, we experience the illegal immigration problem most acutely through the explosion of fentanyl into our state. We’re seeing it all the time. Deaths are rising, doubling in many of our counties.”
And last year, Morrisey and other AGs called for the Biden administration to declare Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
“This administration needs to call these organizations what they really are: terrorists,” Morrisey said then. “The Mexican drug cartels are using fear, intimidation and violence to further their foothold in the illicit drug trade.”
“How many more senseless deaths have to happen before Biden acts?”
That followed a push by Morrisey and 17 other AGs for Biden to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat the U.S. has ever faced, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
