WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, appeared on “America’s Newsroom” Thursday to discuss the president’s national emergency declaration and the record number of apprehensions of unaccompanied minors and family units at the southern border.

Excerpts from the senator’s interview are below, and video can be found here.

“Prior Congresses have given any president this authority to act on the National Emergency Act. This president is maybe expanding it, but he has the authority, and Congress has also given him the discretion of these appropriation bills. I think he is definitely operating within his legal bounds.”

“What I hope the Republican Senate does is not give Nancy Pelosi ball control of the United States Senate, but we should come up with our own piece of legislation that basically states what our position is.”

“We do have a crisis at the border. In 2014, President Obama said it was a humanitarian crisis when 120,000 unaccompanied children and people coming in as families across the border illegally and were apprehended. Last year, 145,000 people came in illegally under those same categories. In five months, Bill, 159,000 unaccompanied children and family members have come to this country illegally [this year]. This is a growing crisis. It's not going away.”

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