With me
now from the US-Mexico
border is Republican House Speaker
Mike Johnson.
Speaker.
Johnson, thanks so much for being here.
Welcome to the LEAD.
Your first time as speaker.
So you're at the border today
and I presume
you're seeing a very dire situation,
hard working border agents,
you know,
who who can't do their jobs
with what they have.
They need more money,
they need more colleagues.
They need more beds for asylum seekers.
They need more funding.
How come the House has not yet
touched this
$14 billion supplemental request
from the Biden administration?
The White House is hammering you on it.
Why not take it up
and help these individuals?
Jake, good to be with you, sir.
It's taking so long to come on with you
since I became speaker.
Listen, this is a catastrophe down here.
And what the White House is
proposing is more money to process
and allow more illegals into the country.
We need to do the opposite of that.
And this is
you don't need to take my word for it.
Listen to the deputy chief of the U.S.
border Patrol who was with us last night.
And he told us in his own words,
he said, It's as if
I'm at an open fire hydrant.
I don't need more buckets
to dump the water.
He said. I need to turn the flow off.
That's why we're here today, Jake.
We had 64 House
Republicans here representing 26 states
and one U.S. territory.
Everybody from California
to Maryland, Michigan to Florida,
because every state in America
is a border state right now.
This catastrophe can come to an end
if the Biden administration
will do its job,
and they've refused to do it,
they're doing the opposite.
So the 14 billion there are you're right,
1600 asylum officers
that would be part of that to speed up
processing of asylum claims.
That's what you're talking about.
But there also would be 1300 more
Border Patrol agents
to work alongside the to 20,200.
And also funding to hire
a thousand
Customs and Border
Protection officers
with the focus on counter fentanyl.
So it's not all in fact,
most of it is not related to
processing asylum seekers.
A lot of it has to do
with what you're talking about,
Jake.
The president should come to the border.
What an idea that would be.
He should talk to the border
agents who are down here.
I think you asking a lot of stuff. Why?
Yeah, well, he went for a photo op.
He should come and spend
a couple of days
like we have to be
with the people here on the ground
who are fighting this war on the border.
That's effectively what it is.
We have so many people, Jake.
7 million
people have come into the country
since Biden walked into the Oval Office.
And that's a low estimate.
Most people believe it
maybe twice that high. We have it.
Nearly 2 million got two ways
that we know about,
not to mention those who evaded capture.
Over 300 known terrorists
apprehended at the border
trying to come in.
We don't know how many evaded
capture and detection
they're in the country,
potentially setting up
terrorist cells everywhere.
Fentanyl is the number one
cause of death for Americans
age 18 to 49,
flowing over the border
like an open sewer.
Human trafficking
is the number one business of the cartels
here, estimated.
We were told the day, Jake,
one of the local sheriffs here
said that they believe
that the cartels are making
$32 million a week
on trafficking human beings into the U.S.
That's over $1.5 billion a year.
Transnational criminal organizations.
And the Biden administration
seems to care nothing about it.
Remember, they could
they could issue executive orders
and fix this overnight.
You could restate
reinstate the remain in Mexico policy.
You could stop the catch
and release policy
that the Biden administration
insist upon.
You could do some
some very important things,
but they refused to do it.
So just just one note
on the terrorist thing.
There aren't hundreds of known terrorists
getting into the country.
There are people
whose identity have been flagged
on a certain database.
I just don't want people out there
thinking that, you know,
200 members of Hamas
have flown into the into the country
and we don't even know about it.
It's a little bit more.
Jake, I'm not I'm
not I'm not saying that it's not serious.
I'm just saying these aren't
necessarily terrorists.
That's the terrorist watch list, Jake.
It takes quite a bit to make that list.
Okay.
These are dangerous people
who are coming into the country.
And we have hardened criminals
who are coming from
all these countries around the world.
They're opening prisons
and sending them here.
We saw it today, Jake.
We know what's happening.
We're talking to the people
on the ground.
So these are not Republican
talking points. This is reality.
And the White House
needs to wake up to it right now.
And these criminals and individuals
have been coming in
for years,
Republican Democratic administrations.
Let's talk about H.R.
two, because that's the House
Republican bill
that calls basically to resume
some of the Trump era policies,
including building
the Trump era border wall.
It would strongly increase
the restrictions
on who could apply for asylum.
Critics of that say
it would essentially
gut the asylum process.
It certainly would restrict it.
That bill is not going
to get 60 votes in the Senate.
And whether or not
that's a good thing or a bad thing,
I leave to you.
But it won't get 60 votes in the Senate.
It won't get signed
by a Democratic Senate
Democratic president.
Is there a compromise on border security
that's being negotiated right now
that you would allow to be voted on
even if a majority of House
Republicans are not behind it,
something that would improve
situation, the situation at the border,
even if not to the point
that you want it to be improved.
Jake, the reason that we've
insisted on the provisions of H.R.
two, which is the bill that we passed
seven months ago
that's been sitting on Chuck
Schumer's desk collecting dust.
The reason we've insisted upon
that is because each of those provisions
work together to secure the border.
You can't, for example,
just reform the asylum program
and leave the broken parole process
on unrepaired.
Then you would have a loophole
that would do absolutely nothing.
You can't just reinstate
Remain in Mexico,
even just
that action would stem
the flow estimated about 70%.
But you have to also,
in catch and release,
all these things work together.
And so
you can't just pick and choose from them
from a menu and expect
that you're going to solve the problem.
I'll quote to you
one of the sheriffs of Otero
County down
here, a border county
who has to deal with this crisis
every day.
He had lunch with us today
and he told us,
he said he was a before him.
He became a sheriff.
He worked for the U.S.
Border Patrol for 26 years.
He said he had worked through
four administrations
who were doing great work,
but it took less than six months
for the Biden administration, in his
words, to unwind 100 years of progress
that the US Border
Patrol had accomplished six months.
These are policy choices
that got us in this situation,
and what we're demanding
is that the policies change
for the good of
every single American citizen.
But I guess my question is, is
if you don't get H.R. two, that's it.
You're not willing to
let's say
let's say there was
I mean, I've seen the White House
and the Democrats in the Senate
go in your direction on this issue
more than I've ever seen Democrats
go in your direction.
And I've been in this town
for a little longer than you.
I've seen President Bush try to do this.
I've seen President Obama try to do this.
And it always comes down
to the House Republicans
and what they're willing to accept.
You would turn down a compromise
that was not 100% of H.R.
two.
Jake, I'm not going to answer
hypotheticals
because they've not sent us any
any any suggestion yet.
There's there's no draft bill.
But I would tell you,
I don't care if they call it H.R. two.
I do care about the provisions
that will seal the border.
I don't think now's the time to do
comprehensive immigration reform,
because to your point,
it's very complicated.
It's very complex to do.
But we can seal the border.
We could do it overnight.
The president has the existing authority
under existing federal law
to do that, and he refuses to do it.
Secretary Mayorkas has administered this.
He's in charge
of operational control of the border.
And what we see here is absolute mayhem.
This is not a Republican
or Democrat issue.
It affects every American
and every citizen along here.
That's why
that's who they need to listen to.
The argument
is that there's only so much a president
can do.
Even Donald Trump
could not seal the border
even when the Remain in Mexico
policy was in place in 2019,
there was still a migrant crisis.
There was still a crisis at the border.
And you might remember
all those TV ads
that Donald Trump ran in 2018
about the caravan
heading into the United States.
A lot of people say
this needs to be solved by Congress.
You're the guys that write the laws.
You're the ones in charge of asylum.
And yes,
President Trump or President Biden
could do X, Y, or Z,
but it's really up to Congress.
When when President Trump
entered the Oval Office, he
he put in the Remain in Mexico policy.
He ended the catch and release policy.
He did the fundamental commonsense
things that stem the flow.
It was down to a tiny
fraction of what it is right now, Jake.
302,000 encounters at the border
in December alone.
It's the highest number in history,
and it's going to continue
because they're showing no,
no, no inclination at all to change it.
They have rolled out the welcome mat,
by the way.
This is costing
American taxpayers
billions and billions of dollars to house
and feed and educate
and give health
care to all these illegals.
If you're from one of these
poor countries,
why would you not make the journey?
Why would you not submit your children
to that dangerous journey?
We don't know what's happening
to them on the way.
This is a humanitarian crisis.
We walk through the centers today, Jake.
It would
it would make the average
American citizen cry
to see what's happening here.
And it must stop. Right.
Which is why
some people are saying
why not pass the $14
billion supplemental bill
that President Biden has put before you
to at least try to help
with some of these?
That won't solve that.
No, I just articulated a darn thing.
Well,
I'm sure the people and the Border
Patrol agents
that you're with
think it might do something,
at least in terms of making their job
a little easier for the next month or so?
No, they don't.
They don't
they don't want the $14 billion.
No, no.
I just quoted to you
the deputy chief of the U.S.
Border Patrol,
and he said he doesn't need more buckets.
In other words,
he doesn't need more personnel
to handle the flow.
He needs to turn the flow off.
That's what we're talking about.
This is not about sending more money down
here. It's about changing the policy.
And the White House
seems not to understand that.
Yeah,
I mean, even President Trump couldn't
couldn't turn the faucet off. Right.
I mean, I understand
your point that he did more
well than Biden did.
He turned the flow down.
Yeah, but it's not.
It is. It's the presidency. It's not.
It's not a magician.
But let me just ask
you one quick
question, sir,
while I have you
and I know you've been generous
with your time,
some members of the House
Freedom Caucus, a very important
plank in the Republican Party.
You're talking about refusing
to vote
to keep the government open unless H.R.
two is law.
How seriously do you take those threats?
Well, look, I don't think
it's just the Freedom Caucus.
I think you have most House
Republicans who are responding
to their constituents
concerns about this border.
So you're hearing some
some some deep resolve.
We said it here
in the press conference here
within the last hour
that we must get
this done is the top priority.
So I'm not I'm not going
to address hypotheticals
about what the scenario is.
But I will tell you
that we are resolved on that,
that and trying
to cut
non-defense discretionary spending
because we passed an important
and dangerous
threshold today, $34
trillion in federal debt.
We are in serious, serious,
dire straits as a nation.
And we have to address
those things seriously. And we will.
That's what you're hearing.
All right.
Well,
we only talked about the border today
because you're at the border.
I hope you come back.
We've got a lot of stuff to talk about
and it's good to have you on.
Republican House Speaker
Mike Johnson, thanks so much.