Source: United States Senator for Oklahoma James Lankford
02.02.22
CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.
CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.
CLICK HERE to watch Fox Business remarks on YouTube.
CLICK HERE to watch Fox Business remarks on Rumble.
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) joined several of his colleagues today to highlight the ongoing national security crisis at the US/Mexico border which is a direct result of the Biden Administration’s lack of leadership and enforcement of US law.
Last week, Lankford revisited the border in the Rio Grande Valley sector to see what progress had been made on reconstruction of the wall and re-implementing the federal court mandate on the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Lankford gave several updates during his trip from the new construction at the border and while he was on a night watch. Lankford is a member of the Homeland Security Committee and the Ranking Member of the Government Operations and Border Management Subcommittee.
Lankford began the day Friday at the Brownsville (TX) Port of Entry, followed by an in-person assessment of the Brownsville Immigration Hearing Facility (IHF) facility to further discuss the reinstatement of Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), known as the “Remain in Mexico Policy.” Then Lankford was briefed at the Fort Brown Station on the MPP enrollment process, moving to the Donna Holding Facility for additional oversight of ongoing operations. Lankford was able to see firsthand areas of the fencing Biden has decided to construct as well as the current levee remediation sites proposed by the Biden Administration. Lankford concluded the day with an aerial ride along with CBP as they identified people illegally crossing the border, followed by a late-night ride along with Border Patrol on the ground as they encountered rafts of people coming across the river into the United States.
Last year, Lankford traveled to the Arizona border to see first-hand the unfinished construction of the southern border wall. He was the first to expose the crisis at the border through Facebook so Oklahomans could see firsthand the crisis at the southern border in Texas.
Remarks
The Biden Administration proposal and their detailed plan on what to do on the border is working exactly as they planned it to work. No one will ever convince me this is an accident. If this was unintentional, they would have already responded to be able to stop it. Not only are they not stopping it, they continue to find people and find new ways for people to not follow the law. Their plan for the border is working exactly as they planned for it to work.
How do I know that? January the 20th of last year, President Biden stepped in the very first day, stopped border wall construction. He put handcuffs on Border Patrol and on CBP and told them they couldn’t actually engage. [He] took away every international agreement that we had with any country to be able to limit border security, he took those away immediately with no plan to substitute.
If any one of these reporters were to go to anyone in the Administration right now and say ‘what is your plan for when the COVID epidemic ends, to be able to limit the flow of people coming across the border?’ they would tell you we don’t have one, we don’t know. What they call Title 42 authority, the limited number of people they are turning around under the COVID pandemic rules, they have no replacement for that.
I spent last week down on the Texas–Mexico border. I met with Border Patrol. I met with CBP. I met with ICE. I went to the places that Ali Mayorkas did not go, and the President and the Vice President would not go and have not gone. Here are the things that I saw first-hand, and I would encourage any reporter to go check my facts on it and to go look and see on it.
What I saw first-hand was a large scale facility that they have set up for the MPP, the Remain in Mexico Program. They’re doing that because the Federal Courts have ordered them to reinstate that policy. That building is empty. So far, they have evaluated 60 people that might be eligible for it, but as they went through the review process, they excused 57 of those and were only running three people through it, three. That was last week in Brownsville, Texas. I’d encourage anyone to go look at that facility. The federal taxpayers are paying millions of dollars for a decorative item so the Biden Administration can tell the courts we’re implementing MPP but not actually doing it.
I’d encourage you to go back and look back at the wall, because the Biden Administration is saying ‘we’re closing the gaps, we’re closing the gaps, there are gaps in the wall, we know it’s nonsensical, we’re closing the gaps.’ I’d encourage anyone to actually go see what is happening. Because you’ll see generations of 30 foot wall that’s there with a gap in-between, and they’re closing the gap with a fence about this tall. And that’s their ‘closing the gap’ in-between. That’s what’s actually going on at the border.
So don’t believe actually the numbers and the statistics and things that are coming out, go see it for yourself, and know. And go talk to the Border Patrol agents who will tell you every single person crossing the border pays between $4,000 and $30,000 per person to actually cross that border that they pay to the cartels. The Biden Administration has been the greatest profit maker for the Mexican cartels that we’ve ever seen and their ability to be able to move humans and smuggling and to move drugs across our border.
I believe the vast majority of the people do not agree with the Biden plan that he’s executing right now for the border. I believe the vast majority of the American people want to see a secure border…everyone wants to be able to see a secure border. We are no different on that. And we look for the Biden Administration to actually have a plan to secure the border, rather than running their current plan to leave an unsecure border.
###