President Joe Biden has reportedly repeatedly lashed out at his staff over chaotic scenes at the border.
The Washington Post published a report on Wednesday detailing some internal divisions ahead of the expiration of Title 42, a policy that lets officials quickly expel migrants.
The paper noted, “As a candidate, Biden condemned Trump for charging migrants with the crime of crossing the border illegally. But Biden is now threatening to apply those same criminal penalties aggressively when the Title 42 pandemic rules end.”
It added Biden is “personally conflicted by the issue.”
However, the paper reports he is “deeply troubled by chaos at the border and the seemingly intractable problems of the U.S. immigration system.”
And according to the Post, Biden has lashed out at staff when he feels they are making excuses for a lack of action at the border.
One former official told the paper, “When Biden would have explosions, and he did have a bunch of them, he’d say: ‘D— it, you haven’t told me anything different from what you told me last week.”
The official added, “Then 10 minutes later, he’d say: ‘Look, I’m sorry, I know everybody is trying.’”
Officials are bracing for the end of Title 42 to usher in a wave of illegal border crossings with one estimate suggesting there could be 13,000 people crossing the border every day.
Even before the policy expired, Fox News reported Border Patrol officials encountered 10,000 migrants crossing the border three days in a row.
Biden administration officials have repeatedly insisted the border is “closed” and “secure.“
While the administration insists the border is secure, the country saw two consecutive years of record-breaking numbers of border crossings.
The 2021 fiscal year set a new record as Border Patrol officials detained 1.7 million migrants at the border.
However, that record was shattered by more than a million in the 2022 fiscal year as officials detained 2.76 million migrants at the border.
Biden told reporters it will be “chaotic” when Title 42 expires.
When asked to explain his comments, he told reporters on Wednesday, “We’ve had chaos at the border for a number of years.”
“We have to fully fund the border security efforts… Look, the purpose of what we’re doing now is making real immigration more streamlined… and moving in the direction that people know that there’s a legal way to get here and not a legal way,” he added.