Joins GOP colleagues at press conference to discuss Biden border crisis

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) joined several Republican colleagues at a press conference earlier today to discuss the Biden administration’s creation of the humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border.

The senator also offered an amendment at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs business meeting that called for completing the approximately 250 miles of unfinished border wall that is already paid for. Every Republican in committee voted to secure the border and every Democrat voted against.

A video from the press conference can be found here, from the Q&A here, and highlights are below.

“We have, over the last two months, we’re approaching 6,000 people per day being apprehended at the southern border. That’s a caravan a day. During the 2018-2019 crisis it was a little over 4,000. This also has cause and effect on it, so I ask you to look at this. And then, as I’ve heard the Biden Administration blame the Trump Administration for the crisis, and unfortunately many people in the media as well, I thought I’d complete this chart as well because it completely disproves that lie. You can see this is just monthly apprehensions, and you can see President Trump solved the problem by and large with return to Mexico, with those agreements with Central America. And then of course we had the CDC impose the Title 42 controls. We had this problem solved until President Biden took office, and there’s the picture proof that this is his crisis. My next point – both President Biden and Vice President Harris know full well, knew full well, the inhumanity, the human depredations, that their policies would cause. They knew their policies would create this human depredation, this inhumanity. And yet, they blew up the successful policies of the Trump administration. You have to ask, why?”

“We have turned border security into a partisan issue. I introduced an amendment today in a business committee markup hearing that just said let’s complete the wall that’s already paid for. We have about 250 miles of wall unfinished that’s bought and paid for. It will cost the American taxpayers $2 billion at least, whether it’s completed or not. In 2006, 26 democrat senators voted with republicans for the Secure Fence Act. That’s 700 miles of wall. Now, a lot of that wall was completely awful. It just didn’t work. So President Trump was instead was going to build 700 miles of wall that worked. Included in those democrat senators were Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Tom Carper. So back in 2006 democrats also agreed, if we want homeland security, we have to have border security. And now, in committee, not one democrat voted to secure the border. Every republican did. Our national security, our homeland security, is put at risk because democrats have turned border security into a partisan issue. It’s a real shame.”

Q&A:

“What we’ve been talking about, and of course what this chart shows, is the pull factor. That’s what’s causing this crisis. The Democrats or President Biden is talking about the push factor, which is undeniable. The corruption, the impunity, the crime, the violence. But if you want to know what the root cause of that is, the reason we have drug cartels down there, because you have violence, is because of America’s insatiable demand for drugs. So unless you can solve that problem really quick, fixing Central America is not the solution. We have to look at these pull factors and we have to solve those.”

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