Epoch Times - Border Situation ‘Worse Than I’ve Ever Seen’—Rep. Jody Hice on His Visit to the Southern Border
Aired: 2021-05-23
Duration: 08:33


=== Border Bottleneck Crisis (07:51) ===

[00:00:00]  So you recently visited the San Diego and Yuma borders.
[00:00:04]  You mentioned that you've been to the border through three different presidential administrations now and so forth.
[00:00:12]  So briefly speaking, what was your experience there?
[00:00:16]  I think I've now been to all nine sectors on our southern border.
[00:00:21]  And I'll just be honest, every time I've gone, I've come back infuriated with what's occurring in our borders.
[00:00:27]  And it has increasingly become worse.
[00:00:30]  And the situation now is worse than I've ever seen it.
[00:00:34]  And we were in San Diego, starting in San Diego, which has Tremendous wall system.
[00:00:41]  There are breaks, there are gaps in the wall, but for the most part, the wall has helped people come through the ports of entry.
[00:00:50]  And so that's probably one of the least problematic areas that we have on our border.
[00:00:56]  And even then, it's just unbelievable what's coming in.
[00:01:01]  The human trafficking, the drug trafficking, the criminals that are still coming across our borders, the enormous lines of those who are legally trying to come and go.
[00:01:12]  Sometimes having to wait, as we were told, as long as four and five hours to get across the border one way or the other.
[00:01:19]  I mean, it's just unbelievable.
[00:01:21]  Then we went from there to Yuma, Arizona, and what our border agents are facing there.
[00:01:28]  We saw buildings that were facilities designed for about 100 people.
[00:01:32]  While I was there, there was well in excess over 400 in those facilities.
[00:01:38]  And on Sunday, before we got there, they said there was over 700.
[00:01:42]  And this type of thing is across the board.
[00:01:45]  Our border agents, we were told, in one of the sectors, one of the areas that we just came from, 80% of our border agents are processing illegal individuals, which leaves only 20% guarding our borders.
[00:01:59]  It is impossible.
[00:02:01]  We already have a shortage of border agents, but now of those we have in certain areas, only 20% are actually there doing their job because the mass numbers of people who have to be processed.
[00:02:19]  The unbelievable.
[00:02:21]  While we were there, the night before, four individuals from Iran were captured.
[00:02:28]  We were told in one area they had already had over a hundred or in the ballpark of 160 different countries coming across that area of our southern border.
[00:02:39]  Who are these people?
[00:02:40]  Why are they coming?
[00:02:42]  What are their intentions?
[00:02:43]  Why are they allowed basically to freely enter our country Right now.
[00:02:48]  And we are allowing this.
[00:02:51]  It's a frightful thing.
[00:02:52]  It is a humanitarian crisis.
[00:02:54]  It is a national security crisis.
[00:02:57]  And of course, it's impacting our economy on multiple fronts as well.
[00:03:05]  I'm not necessarily that surprised that there's a lot of interest in coming to America.
[00:03:10]  My parents escaped from communist Poland in the 70s and came to North America to look for a better life, to get away from persecution and so forth.
[00:03:19]  Presumably, some of these people are going to be in that boat.
[00:03:22]  Broadly speaking, maybe just for the record, what is your position on immigration in general?
[00:03:27]  We are a country that welcomes people from other parts of the world, but there's a right way and a wrong way to come here.
[00:03:33]  And right now, and this is exasperated by us having open borders and us as a country right now not even abiding by our own immigration laws.
[00:03:45]  What is the point of having laws if we're not going to abide with those laws?
[00:03:50]  And right now it's coming direct from the White House and this administration Don't abide by the laws.
[00:03:58]  And that's very puzzling and concerning to me.
[00:04:02]  On the other hand, our immigration right now is bottlenecked.
[00:04:07]  I personally know individuals that have taken up to 27 years to become a legal citizen of this country.
[00:04:13]  It should never take that long.
[00:04:15]  And the expense involved in that is enormous as well.
[00:04:20]  So, look, the problems are on both sides.
[00:04:23]  We have got to simplify the process of coming into this country legally.
[00:04:29]  We've got to deal with a bottleneck issue that is here, the amount of time and the expense for people to come here legally.
[00:04:37]  But at the same time, that does not provide an excuse for people to come here illegally and for us as a country to be irresponsible in not even checking who these individuals are who are coming.
[00:04:50]  The enormous amounts of fentanyl and the drugs, the cartels right now basically run every square inch of our southern border.
[00:05:01]  And we've got to get this thing under control.
[00:05:07]  You know, one of the videos that I saw, you were there, I think, with Congressman Perry, was this, you know, terrible canal or river with, you know, raw sewage and so forth.
[00:05:19]  Well, and you were just describing that people actually swim through there to get across the border.
[00:05:24]  I think it's the most polluted river in America or something like this.
[00:05:27]  If you're standing here, you don't want to smell this.
[00:05:29]  This is raw sewage coming from Mexico directly into the United States.
[00:05:33]  And believe it or not, in just a little while, we're going to watch foreign nationals come illegally right down the middle of this river, right underneath these gates.
[00:05:41]  They actually swim underneath the gates right into the United States of America in a river of sewage.
[00:05:47]  Right here, last night, they caught Iranian foreign nationals illegally coming into this country.
[00:05:52]  This is the situation at the border happening today.
[00:05:57]  Just looking at that on the face of it, I think those people are pretty serious about wanting to get away from something to do that.
[00:06:04]  So there's this kind of humanitarian question, right?
[00:06:09]  Is the system just not able to handle all the people that really do need help and are willing to swim a river of sewage to get here?
[00:06:18]  Yeah, I mean, there are multiple reasons involved, but that was in Mexicali and Calexico area where the new river comes out.
[00:06:27]  And listen, the most polluted river in America, why is the EPA not even involved in this?
[00:06:34]  Why do we continue letting this raw sewage come into our country?
[00:06:38]  That in itself is a whole other issue.
[00:06:41]  But there are people willing to do anything to come into America, of course.
[00:06:45]  America is a land of opportunity and freedom, and people want that from other places in the world.
[00:06:51]  And we don't want to deny the pursuit of those things.
[00:06:56]  The human heart longs for liberty and freedom, and people want to come to America for that.
[00:07:01]  But as we are currently opening our borders to individuals like this, we are gradually changing the freedoms that we have in this country.
[00:07:12]  As we are breaking down laws, criminals are coming into this country, the drugs, the human smuggling, all these type of things It's just a wide-open, inexcusable.
[00:07:26]  Any country that does not have borders ultimately is not a country.
[00:07:30]  It's just a land mass.
[00:07:31]  And we are frightfully moving down that direction, and I really don't understand why.

=== Epoch TV Launch (00:57) ===

[00:07:40]  What good for our country possibly can result from having open borders like we currently have?
[00:07:49]  Hey, thanks for watching American Thought Leaders.
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[00:08:04]  Now, to deal with this, we've actually launched a new video platform, Epoch TV. Epoch TV is our premium platform for digital video content.
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[00:08:22]  And frankly, this is our contribution, if you will, to the uncensored media landscape, which is something we really, really need in this country and around the world, frankly.