WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, talked about Iran’s aggressive behavior and addressing the immigration crisis at the southern border, including Operation Safe Return, during an interview on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ Excerpts from his interview are below and video can be found here.

On Iranian aggression

(4:45) “I think Iran is playing a very, very dangerous game. It makes no sense that they’d go after the U.K. I think that they were trying to divide the U.S. from our friends and allies. They’re just uniting us in hopefully standing up to Iran once and for all demanding they never have a nuclear weapon and to end their ballistic missile technology and their malign sponsor of terrorism around the region and around the world.”

On the border crisis

(5:29) “We took a good step, but it's a baby step, in signing a letter support for Operation Safe Return where we rapidly and more accurately determine those families that clearly don't have even a credible fear claim and safely – and I underline safely – return those individuals back to the safe zones of Central America.”

(5:54) “Since 2014, that was the humanitarian crisis year … when 120,000 unaccompanied children, but primarily people coming as a family unit entered this country illegally, we’ve had 1,148,000 unaccompanied children and family members enter this country illegally, been apprehended and they’ve been dispersed all over America. It has overwhelmed the adjudication system. We've only removed about 12,000 of about the 820,000 family members. That's about one and a half percent. That creates a huge incentive for more people.”

(8:11) “We have to start, from my standpoint, to reduce that flow of people coming in the country exploiting our broken asylum system, focus on that while we certainly try and help Central America.”

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