With people and drugs flowing into the U.S. from Mexico increasingly unabated, Missouri is now a border state, Sen. Josh Hawley said Thursday – while warning that the Biden administration’s self-inflicted humanitarian crisis is about to get a lot worse.

Hawley is among a bipartisan group of senators trying to stop the White House from ending the “Title 42” power to turn people away from the border due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many warn the move will result in an even bigger flood of immigrants who, as opposed to airline passengers, aren’t necessarily vaccinated and certainly aren’t required to mask up.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that his state will bus any immigrants released there by the federal government to the steps of the nation’s Capitol. The Heartlander asked Hawley whether Missouri should consider doing the same.

“If the federal government starts sending illegal immigrants into our state,” he said, “then I don’t think the state should be passive at all about saying, ‘Whoa, we’ve not been consulted, and these folks aren’t here legally. And we don’t want to just become a place where you ship to us folks who we have no idea who they are. We have no idea where they’ve come from. We’ve no idea of their criminal history.’ So absolutely, I think the states should take whatever actions are available under the Constitution, under the laws of the state.  

The growing border crisis is the Biden administration’s alone, Hawley argues.

“There wasn’t one when President Trump left office. They have created a humanitarian crisis, a health crisis, a child safety crisis. They own it, what they have done at the border. And now Biden wants to just completely open the border. ‘If you want to come in, come in, come into the interior of the country. We have no idea where you’ll go. We have no idea if you’ll show up for your court hearing.’

“I mean, it is truly open borders. I’m completely against it, and I will do whatever I can to stop it.”

That red-carpet treatment is quite in contrast to how the administration is treating citizens and legal immigrants, Hawley says. You can’t get many cold and allergy medications without an ID, or vote or get on an airplane without one. And you still have to wear a mask to board an airplane, despite the airlines’ pleas to the White House to end the mandate.

Indeed, the senator notes, Biden officials want citizens and legal immigrants “to have to show proof of vaccination. They want them to have to wear masks everywhere. They want children under 5 to have to wear masks in daycare. But they want no health and safety standards at the border. That’s the Biden position. It’s insane. I mean, it’s just totally insane, befitting a president who, frankly, is incompetent. 

“I think you would get a bipartisan majority to stop it if we could get a vote on it. And most importantly, I suspect the American people are going to have something to say about it in November.”

In practicality, with the open border and the Biden administration transporting illegal immigrants to wherever it likes in the country, every state is now a border state, Hawley says. “And that this administration would open our borders and flood our schools and our neighborhoods with drugs and with crime — it’s wrong. It’s wrong.

“Unfortunately there is not a place you can go in our state that is not affected by fentanyl, that is not affected by meth, that is not affected by opioids. And where are they coming from? Almost entirely across the southern border.

“We used to be known as a meth-producing state. Not anymore. I can tell you, as the former attorney general, we don’t produce meth in any significant quantity in the state. It comes from across the border. Fentanyl comes from across the border.”

With all the restrictions placed on American citizens, Hawley argues that the Biden administration’s giving Mexican drug cartels free rein at the U.S. border “is so backwards and it is so wrong. It’s so contrary to the rule of law that I just can’t believe they’re going to go through with it.

“And again, I just think that the American people are going to have something to say about this.