In Tuesday’s hearing on the border crisis, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), pointed directly to the Department of Homeland Security and the Biden administration for the uncontrollable situation.

“The most solemn responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect the people of the United States…in choosing to actively ignore the immigration laws passed by Congress and in choosing to pursue policies that encourage unprecedented levels of uncontrolled illegal immigration to the United States, this Administration and this DHS have failed on both counts,” Grassley said.

In the hearing, which featured DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who has increasingly come under fire over border security, Grassley noted that federal authorities have apprehended more than 1.4 million migrants since President Biden took office.

Calling the US-Mexico border a “sorry state of affairs” Grassley says the situation was not only “entirely preventable” but “also entirely predictable.” The senior Senator mentioned specific policies implemented by Biden which led to the crisis. Many of Biden’s problematic actions were “rolling back or reversing” former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

”When you terminate physical barrier construction, severely restrict the ability of ICE to deport illegal immigrants, terminate the  ’ Remain in Mexico ’  program, roll back asylum cooperative agreements, gut Title 42, and openly support sanctuary city policies, then you shouldn’t be surprised when there’s a surge at the southern border,” Grassley said in his opening remarks.

“When you allow the ACLU and open-borders immigration activists rather than career law enforcement professionals to dictate the terms of your immigration and border policies, then you shouldn’t be surprised when record-shattering numbers of people start showing up at the border to take advantage of that,” Grassley added.

“When you run DHS like it’s an ‘Abolish ICE’ fan club, you shouldn’t be surprised when you have an illegal immigration crisis on your hands,” the senator went on. Referencing the roughly one-and-a-half million people who have illegally crossed the border into the United States, Grassley said, “That on its own is an astounding number.”

 “It’s greater than the individual populations of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, and Washington, DC. It’s twice as large as the Des Moines, Iowa, metro area. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who got away.”