In response to the latest report of this year’s border surge, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, Chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, blasted the Obama administration’s immigration policies. The Senator called for reducing “the incentives for illegal immigration.”
Johnson, appearing on the James T. Harris radio show, discussed the “Securing the Southwest Border: Perspectives from Beyond the Beltway” hearing he held in March in which Cochise County Sheriff Dannels and Chris Cabrera, Border Patrol Agent and representative of the National Border Patrol Council, participated.
At that hearing, witnesses testified as to the land management laws that prevent Border Patrol agents from routinely patrolling large swaths of federal land, and the drug cartels and human smugglers who continue to exploit the Obama administration’s policies.
“The border is not secure contrary to what President Obama and his administration wants to lead us to believe,” Johnson told Harris, which he said is that “they have been dramatically improving border security.” While Johnson was adamant that “there have been some improvements made in places like San Diego; where we build fences and beef up personnel. We’ve improved border security in certain areas and in certain sectors,” he said it wasn’t enough. “The problem is just like in a flood – you can sandbag your house, but the water just flows around. That’s the real take away.”
Johnson said that he learned at his hearings that “the bottom line is that this is an incredibly complex situation. It is really driven by the drug cartels, the human traffickers, and the transnational criminal organizations. This is a big, big problem. I think this federal government is really burying its head in the sand, and we’re not addressing it adequately.”
“It’s a difficult issue – it’s very complex, and we’re not going to be able to secure the border overnight but a lot of it has to do with the people are in denial about it,” stated Johnson. “A lot of it has to do with the fact that people are denying reality. I was talking about the first step in solving a problem – you have to admit that you have it – and again we’ve got this administration kind of glossing over the whole problem.”
Johnson confirmed reports that there is currently another surge. “It’s not as bad as last year, and so they,” Johnson said referring to the Obama administration, “minimize the problem. But had it not been the horrific problems of last year, this would still be a record year of unaccompanied children flooding the border.”
Johnson said the problem stems from the fact that the Obama administration’s “really bad policy on the part of this administration – on deferred action, on childhood admissions, which basically signals to kids in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that if you can get across the border you’re home free. That’s basically been the reality.”
Johnson continued, “So we have all kinds of incentives in our immigration laws that create this surge of illegal immigration.” He called for immigration laws that “reduce the incentives for illegal immigration, and we’ve got to get a lot more serious about providing the resources; fencing, increasing manpower, technology for detection.”
Johnson called for an end to Obama administration’s catch and release policy. “Once we apprehended them, we can’t just give them a Notice to Appear, and send them throughout America where they end up living in the shadows.”
Johnson was complimentary to the agents on the border, but said that because of the Obama administration policies, “CBP -Customs and Border Protection- should really be called “Customs and Border Processing because what they do – they actually do in many cases a really fine job – they’ve rallied when they handled that humanitarian crisis. The Border Patrol agents that I have talked to are really fantastic people, but it is the policies that have been put in place – they catch them, they process them, give them a Notice to Appear and then they send them across America.
Harris asked about the recent case of the illegal immigrant who was going to be released by ICE despite the fact that he has untreatable Tuberculosis. Johnson responded, “You know James, you really hit on it; securing our border is not just to solve the illegal immigration problem, it is health and safety problem. Not only untreatable strains of Tuberculosis, but other diseases that are endemic in developing countries and of course, how about national security? The category they call “Other than Mexican” that could contain terrorists affiliated with transnational criminals, transnational Islamic terror is something that really concerns me.”
This week, sources advised the Arizona Daily Independent that they have seen an increase in male immigrants who appear to be from India. In response, Victor Brabble, Director, Arizona Joint Information Center for CBP issued a statement: “CBP is NOT seeing an increase in Indian national apprehensions in Arizona, but rather a decrease.” Brabble explained in a telephone interview that while individual agents, in certain sectors along the border, may have noticed an increase, the overall numbers do not reflect what boots on the ground see.