California Congressman Tom McClintock joins Armstrong & Getty for a follow-up discussion days after his trip the southern border in Texas.
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From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show. In March, Customs and Border Protection stopped seventy one percent more people than in February, one hundred and seventy two thousand. That's larger than the entire population of McAllen, Texas, a common point of entry in the Rio Grand Valley. Lance new House is a farmer in McCallan whose land is just south of the border wall. He says every day he sees about one hundred migrants cut through his field. At times, groups have pretended to blend in with his workers or even hide and crops. You can't harvest it. Sugarcane is huge, and if you're if there's a person hiding in there, you can't see him in the machinery. Doesn't forgive no. Um. It's such a mess on the border, and it doesn't seem like it's getting any better. I'm glad we're talking to somebody that's been there recently. Yeah. Tomma Clintock, Congressman from the fourth California, was in McCallen, Texas earlier this week to tour a resettlement facility, one of the many many facilities just jammed full of immigrants, illegal immigrants, children, and and more. Tom, welcome back to the show. How are you. I'm doing fine, Thanks, guys, excellent. So let's put aside politics completely for the moment. What is the humanitarian situation on the border as you observed it. Well, you're seeing enormous numbers of of children and young people coming in and there's a reason for that under the new policies of if you claim you're under eighteen or you're in the company of a child under seven, you're automatically in and that's why you're And in addition to that, by flooding the zone with children, uh, they can focus the border attention on that, you know, trying to save kids who have been thrown off of rafts into the river, things like that. Uh, not to mention the enormous amount of manpower it takes to take care of them. While the Border patrol is doing that, they can sneak the bad guys in that that's the hundred and thirty thousand getaway so far this year that they've been talking about. And the Border Patrol tells me that is a very low estimate. It maybe three or four times as many. Um, so it's it's completely out of control. But the reason why so many families are sending their kids north is because it works. Get across the border. If you can survive that two thousand mile trail of terror, you're in. And the cartels are fully aware of American policy at the moment. Oh, they're more aware of it than than members of Congress are sometimes there their equipment is better than the border patrol has. We were standing on the bank of the Rio Grand River one night looking through night scopes. Uh. The cartels we're looking right back at at us through through night scopes that were much much more powerful. Something. And one more quick note about being overwhelmed at the border. I'm hold by border patrol. Uh that because they are so completely overwhelmed by the humanity and then dealing with especially the youngsters. They are all sorts of drugs getting through, including the fentanyl that our friends in China are so kindly manufacturing for us. Well, again, if you can flood the zone with families with children, uh, there's an enormous amount you can do while the border patrol is occupied against so many of them our are are changing diapers in baby babysitting. Well, we've got to mention, not to mention stopping gang fights in a lot of youth pods. Don't forget a lot of these youths are sixteen seventeen years old. Some of them are older than that, simply claiming to be seventeen. They already have gang affiliations. That said, a lot of fights breakout in these bods between rival gang members. They know who each other is. And according to reports in recent days, UM various sexual molestation and that sort of stuff. Have you heard anything about that, Well, I've seen the reports of the They really shocking thing is UM when when they are that overwhelmed, they're not doing a lot of vetting when they sending these kids out. And don't forget the the families that are sending these kids north or bringing them north are paying the cartels about four thousand dollars a pop. The cartels are making about a half a billion dollars a month just in human trafficking. Forget the drug trafficking of so the the um. You know, we're free feeding the drug cartels money. And we're also um when they get here, Uh, we make enormous efforts to to get them where they want to go in the United States. We make no effort to find out where these kids came from and get them back home to where they began. If we were doing that, you wouldn't be having this huge influx of migration, because the word would get out very quickly, don't come north, you won't get in. They'll send you right back home again. And as one of the border patrol agents told me, the cartels don't give refunds. Well, politically, I don't know how this is going to get straightened out, because I think it's so unlikely that the Biden administration is going to want to say, look, we're not letting you in. Nobody's getting in, and even if you get in, we're sending you back. I I just don't see that happening. Well, that's that's unfortunate, because we were implementing those policies and they were working. Uh, the border was secure in January. But you know, if you if you look at the numbers, they tell the story pretty clearly. The week of the election last year, a hundred family units that illegally cross the border, a hundred by inauguration week that figured increased to eleven hundred in a week. The weekend in March that number was fifteen thousand, So that the border under control was it was Biden's open invitation that that overwhelmed our facilities and and his administration's answer seems to be not to control the border, but rather to open gigantic welcome centers to process more people. Congressman Tom mc clintock is on the line a couple of different reactions that time. Number one, the President, I'm not sure if he understands what's going on or to what extent he's in charge. We played tape of Kamala Harris comparing ICE to the KKK from about a year and a half ago, hearing I'm sure you saw, but a really interesting revelation in recent days, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas was behind closed doors, and while he publicly, you know, trashed the Trump administration their policies, he was advocating, uh, standing up for ICE, more deportations, taking on sanctuary cities, repairing the wall, and all sorts of stuff. Did you catch those reports? Actually some of the border patrol agents may mentioned that to me. Uh, But unfortunately Kamala Harris is in charge of border security, and as I said at the time, that's a lot like asking Glene Maxwell to to chaperone a high school promp. I mean, it's the horror if they're they're they're not serious about this crisis, that they actually like it. Well, I I just took it as good news. If the DHS secretary has, uh, you know, a view closer to what I think is the right way to handle this, maybe he'll be heard at some point. I don't know, I don't I don't know how we get out of this. Like I said, politically, the Biden administration would just get destroyed by its base if they if they switched course, and if they don't switch course, how is it going to improve? Well, uh, first of all, I think the American people are clearly galvanizing against this as they begin to realize the magnitude of the crisis that we're facing. The border, if you can even call it a border anymore. I mean, when you're allowing people simply be waved into the country as they cross illegally, you really don't have a border. And if you don't have a border, you don't have a country. And don't forget. Gallop of did a survey in Latin America and their conclusion was there about forty two million people in Latin America and the Caribbean who very much would like to come to the United States, and under these policies they can. Uh. So I think we're at the beginning of a mass migration of historic proportions. Uh. And I don't know of any civilizations that survived such a phenomenonomy history scream this warning at us that that countries that either cannot or will not defend their borders simply aren't around very long. And you know, as we've mentioned before, the cartels are acutely aware of the shifts in thinking. They read the report about Alejandro Majorcas. They can read the tea leaves. So I'd imagine there is an enormous hurry up on flooding the border with as many people as possible. So you, as a member of the House of Representatives, what do you advocate happens? First? What's the most critical need? Restore the Trump policies that have taken control of the border, Finish the border wall, enforced court ordered deportations, restore the remain in Mexico policy, those were the Trump policies restored control of the border. Those were the policies that Biden reversed his very first day in office. Now, then we can have a discussion about what to do with those who have lived in the United States for many years and not committed any crimes while they're here. But that discussion can't begin until we secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. Otherwise we're simply encouraging more of it. And as far as being in a rush, like I said, there are forty two million people behind the group that's coming in right now, ready to migrate as well. Congressman Tom mc clintock the fourth District of California, A question is kind of off topic. Before he came on, I was clicking around trying to figure out what committees you were on and the rest of it, and I came across ballot Pedia, which was looking at your votes and everything, and they called you a moderate Republican. And it's funny because I've always thought his view as a deficit hawk in a spending hawk, fiscal conservative and all. But what's your philosophy as a congressman? What are you doing there in d C? Tom liberty. I've got a bit of a civil libertarian streak in me, which which on some of these surveys, UH, pulls me off of a strict conservative definition. But I believe in in freedom. I believe in the god given right of people to make their own decisions as they go through life. I believe in the principles of the American founding. And that is why you're one of the few politic Asians that we actually consider it to be a friend. Toma Clintock, fourth District to California. Tom, always great to talk thanks here. Thanks again, keep up the good work. I don't know how this border story ends. I really don't. I just I don't. I don't think the bite iministration is going to change course. And if they don't, it's just gonna continue to grow, you know. I think it's probably about what you were saying, uh, and I was saying about Alejandro Mayorcas. You are publicly saying the we will never repeat the sins of the Trump administration, the racist, xenophobic. And while I'm out the front droning, you are behind the scenes scrambling like held reinstitute every chapter in verse of it. I have a very strong feeling I could be, and I'd probably work in the way to drive by media handles things. They'd probably right, yeah, because they stepped in it. Man, it is a serious problem down there. Half. It's half a dozen different kinds of problem. The fate of the poor kids, the fact that people are renting their children two would be illegal immigrants, so that when the person comes across and says, yeah, this is my son, he probably doesn't even know his name. You have to let him in as a family union, a unit rather and and the cartels know it. You've got the drug crisis, You've got the now what do we do with these people crisis, You've got the gang thing. It's really a nightmare.