Mark Kelly Seeks to Rewrite His Record on Border Security.
by David Shephard, ©2026
(Jun. 30, 2026) — Over the weekend, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat who is currently masquerading as “moderate,” took an opportunity to tell a national audience that he believes that Joe Biden “did a bad job at the border.” Why does he tell us this now? Biden left office two years ago; what good can come from attacking him now? Wouldn’t it have been better to tell him that he was doing a bad job while he was still in power, and while he still had the time and opportunity to change course?
Well, perhaps Kelly is thinking of running for President in 2028, or perhaps he is just saying it to appeal to his border-state constituents, who at this point may start to realize that he is a political chameleon. Or perhaps he is trying, for the sake of history, to spin his role of inaction in the border crisis of the early 2020s.
Today Democrats are cynically using Joe Biden as a scapegoat on mass illegal immigration and the previous open border policy. The issue has tarnished the Democrats’ brand, but their hope is to finally put the issue into retirement along with Joe Biden; that is, they are pushing the narrative that he is the only Democrat who deserves blame, and he is gone back to Delaware, so let’s move on. Democrats aren’t looking for forgiveness from the voters; they simply want voters to forget what happened with our border and immigration policy when they were in charge.
But when it comes to the issue of the invasion that took place at our southern border, Mark Kelly is not innocent; he doesn’t have clean hands, and in fact he is every bit as much to blame as Joe Biden. As a Senator, Mark Kelly had the power to force the Biden administration to change course, not with words or gentle persuasion, but with his vote in the Senate. If Kelly really thought Biden was doing a bad job at the border, he could have done something about it. Indeed, he’d have a responsibility to do everything he could to stop Biden from doing a bad job.
The fact is Mark Kelly had real power to help secure the border. He chose not to use it.
When Joe Biden took office in 2021, the Senate consisted of 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 2 independents, both of whom caucused with the Democrats. So, the Senate was tied 50-50, but Democrats, with the vote of the Vice President, had a majority of 51. In effect, without a vote to spare, every Democratic Senator was the deciding vote on all legislation. In such a scenario every Democratic Senator could extract policy changes in exchange for their vote. It was a good time to be a Democratic Senator.
West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin used this clout to block the Biden administration on numerous occasions, such as on their no-ID, same-day registration voting bill, misguided Green New Deal, and “Build Back Better” massive social spending bill. Even when Manchin voted with the Biden administration, he got some modifications to the bill in exchange for his vote. A good example would be the American Rescue Act, where Manchin did get the overall price tag reduced.
Manchin was a Democrat who was willing to fight for the interests of his state and the nation. He was willing to stand up to Biden and his disastrous policies. Not so for Mark Kelly. He decided not to challenge Biden on the border. But he could have.
Kelly held all the high cards; that is, Biden needed Kelly more than Kelly needed Biden. True, Biden did pull out a close race in Arizona, but on the issue of immigration Biden was not popular in the Grand Canyon State. Even Arizona Democrats didn’t want Biden’s border policies, so Kelly could have extracted policy changes from Biden with no backlash. And by the simple threat of withholding his vote on legislation that Biden wanted, he could have gotten Biden to change direction at the border. Such an approach would have been in the interest of Arizona, a border state, but unlike Joe Manchin, Kelly fell in line with the party.
In 2021 Mark Kelly dishonestly told reporters that he would “continue holding this administration accountable” on the issue of the border. This was a lie; Kelly did nothing. In fact, he opposed border wall funding and opposed amendments to force Biden to build parts of the wall already paid for. At most, occasionally Kelly would go to the press and express regret that Biden “didn’t have a plan” to deal with the invasion when in truth Kelly knew Biden caused the invasion.
And now after 10 million plus illegals have come in and Biden is safely out of office, Kelly tells reporters that “Biden did a bad job on the border.”
That is a nice spin, Senator, but the reality is that you did a bad job. You let your constituents and the country down. You had an opportunity to force a change of course on border security and illegal immigration, and you blew it.