House Dems skip Mexico border wall tour before Yuma hearing

YUMA, Ariz. — House Judiciary Committee Democrats boycotted a Wednesday night tour of the US-Mexico border ahead of a Thursday hearing on the border crisis — labelling it a “stunt” even as illegal immigration hits record-breaking levels.

More than a dozen Judiciary Committee Republicans examined gaps in the border barrier — at one point spotting a yellow school bus arriving just before midnight on the Mexican side of the Colorado River.

“I don’t know any school letting out,” a member of the group snarked as the bus parked near the Morelos Dam outside Yuma, Ariz.

“I see a school bus right now, at midnight, loitering directly across the dam,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as he looked across the small body of water. “It just came into this area, now it’s leaving this area, and it looks like it just did a drop-off.”

“It’s very, very, very possible,” agreed a Border Patrol agent who accompanied the group.

The delegation didn’t spot any migrants illegally crossing the border during a series of stops along the route, but were told by agents that it remains a regular occurrence.

Grandstanding Democrats shunned the ride-along, citing unspecified scheduling conflicts and drawing the scorn of their GOP colleagues.

“It’s important to actually get a first-hand perspective on a very important policy area that we’re responsible for legislating — and I think if you talk to people in our country, in every state, Democrats, Republicans and independents, people are incredibly concerned about the crisis at the border and so it really shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) told The Post.

“They obviously knew about the trip,” added committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “We welcomed them, that’s why we invited them to come. But maybe if you’re a Democrat and this border situation is so bad, maybe they didn’t want to show up for that reason — because it’s such a mess.”

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), herself an immigrant from Ukraine, said she had toured four sections of the border in Texas and met with border officials in California — which has helped her understand the scope of the problem in different areas.

“There are a lot of desperate people who become slaves to cartels,” she said. “It’s bad for the people and it’s also bad for our country… We have big parts of the border where we have a lot of gotaways where we don’t even know who these people are.”

She added that US leaders “have a lot of capabilities [but] don’t have a desire” to better secure the border.

Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) had been expected to join the trip, but later backed out — calling the GOP visit a “stunt” after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) visited the border last week to hammer Biden and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.

Nadler and Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) issued a joint statement asserting that some Democrats on the committee were previously booked to go on other congressional trips and said that Judiciary Democrats would make their own border stop in March.

“Despite the importance of this issue, there was no consultation with Judiciary Democrats, many of whom have already committed [to] attending other bipartisan congressional delegation trips,” Nadler and Jayapal said.

“Instead of focusing on real solutions to a complicated problem, Judiciary Republicans will once again not hear from any federal government witnesses at their hearing, further cementing this hearing as a brazen act of political grandstanding. As a result, Democrats, who have been to the border regularly the last few years, will not attend next week’s performative hearing.”

Spokespeople for Nadler and Jayapal would not share additional details with The Post regarding the conflicting trips and it’s unclear where exactly the Democratic border stop will be and whether Republicans will be allowed to join.

The Post contacted all of the 19 Democrats on the panel but received responses only from spokespeople from Nadler and Jayapal, who pointed to their bosses’ Feb. 16 statement.

President Biden halted border-wall construction in January 2021 but his administration in July 2022 resumed construction of the wall near the dam following a surge there.

Still, a roughly 300-foot gap remains a popular crossing point, border agents said, adding that some asylum-seekers frustrated with the slow pace of processing at the border hail an Uber to the local Border Patrol office to turn themselves in and get the paperwork needed to remain in the US pending adjudication of their claims — rather than wait to be loaded onto buses.

Just south of the dam, another section of the Arizona frontier with Mexico lacks a border wall due to opposition from the Cocopah Indian Tribe.

The wall, constructed under former President Donald Trump, abruptly ends at the tribe’s reservation land.

The tribe positioned large signs saying “no trespassing” and “no dumping” that warn “violators will be prosecuted” and risk 90 days in jail — but the lack of border wall creates an opening that is regularly transited by migrants, who typically start arriving around 1 a.m.

Border Patrol agents have portable toilets for migrants who turn themselves in at the location, but some intentionally elude authorities by crossing through vast fields of broccoli and lettuce.

Agents smooth the soil to track footprints of the so-called “gotaways,” who often are suspected of drug smuggling in the area.

The Biden administration has presided over a record surge in illegal immigration — with nearly 2.4 million illegal border-crossing arrests in fiscal 2022, which ended Sept. 30, up from 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, fewer than 500,000 in 2020 and nearly 1 million in 2019. 

Drug cartels, meanwhile, have smuggled large amounts of fentanyl sourced largely from China across the border — fueling an unprecedented wave of US overdose deaths as the compound, which can kill in doses as small as 10 grains of table salt, is increasingly mixed into non-opioid drugs such as cocaine and counterfeit prescriptions.

There were about 196,000 US deaths from fentanyl between 2018 and 2021 alone — exceeding the US fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and Afghanistan War combined.

Some Republican members of Congress heckled Biden during the State of the Union address on Feb. 7 and blamed him for fentanyl deaths, but his administration is quick to tout that it’s seizing more fentanyl in the border than ever before.

“We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers, seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months,” Biden said at the time.

But Jordan, standing at the border late Wednesday, noted there’s an unknown amount of fentanyl still getting through unguarded points along the border.

“If they’re seizing that much, just think about how much is getting across,” Jordan said. “In fact we just heard from the Border Patrol agent, he said that when there’s a group of illegal migrants that they’re having to process, that’s when the cartel will bring in the drugs because all of the Border Patrol is dealing with the people, and understandably so.”

A Border Patrol agent told the delegation that he blames Biden for the migrant surge, noting the swift escalation of the crisis when power changed hands.

“When President Trump took office, with rhetoric alone the numbers dropped,” the agent said. “When President Biden took office, with rhetoric alone the number rose.”