Republican Architect Of Bipartisan Border Bill Reacts To Biden's Immigration Executive Orders

6 months ago

In a video released on social media Tuesday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) spoke about President Biden's executive orders on immigration.

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Transcript

00:00Senator James Lankford here. I'm just stepped outside of the Capitol itself. I've been reading

00:06through same thing some of you might have been reading through, and that is the information

00:10about the new asylum changes that the administration says they're planning to be able to make and

00:16to be able to read through. It reads like a document that looks like it's going to do

00:19a lot, but when I go through it, I ask the some of the basic questions. What's missing

00:23from this? So let me just get my initial reactions. I'm still waiting to be able to get the full

00:27details on it. First reaction is pretty simple on this. It only deals with very high numbers.

00:32If there's very high numbers coming across, then they quote unquote kick in this new authority

00:37on it. The bill that I was actually working on several months ago, this was the bolt on

00:42piece at the end was the high numbers. We affected the very first person. The bill that

00:46I'd helped write was the first person that came across. Their screening would be differently.

00:52They would have a faster process. They would have fewer appeals. So it was set up to say

00:55the first person that comes across will be arrested, will be quickly screened and quickly

00:59deported. This doesn't do anything until they get into high numbers. They're also using

01:03the number 2,500 as the number that they're going to say is a high number. That sounds

01:08like it when people say, well, your, your number is like four or 5,000 totally different

01:12apples and oranges on it. You got to read what they're not including. They're not including

01:16all the people in the CPP one app. That's about 1600 people a day that are bringing

01:20in. They're not including the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and folks that are coming

01:24across. They're getting parole. Those are going to all be exempted. They're all exempting

01:28all the folks that are unaccompanied minor coming in. So this number is going to be four

01:31or 5,000, uh, pretty high on it as well. That was always my pushback to say that's too high

01:37of a number, but they're also just starting with that number, then doing nothing for those

01:42folks that are coming in. They're also using authority that they know is going to be enjoined

01:46by the court immediately rather than doing the things that they know they could do immediately.

01:51So here's my frustration. There are things this administration could do right now today

01:56that they know won't be enjoined by the court. They could turn off the parole authority they

02:00turned on. That's about 2,500 people a day that they're currently welcoming in that this

02:06administration started that, that they could turn off immediately. So the 5,200 or so people

02:12coming in a day right now, they could turn off 2,500 of those immediately. They could

02:16also put in place, uh, the state department things that they've had in the past, uh, both

02:21negotiations with Guatemala, Honduras, uh, and, and El Salvador and others to be able

02:26to turn people around. They turn those off. This administration did. Those things could

02:30be turned back on. They could do the remain in Mexico. There has to be some kind of conversation

02:35with Mexico. If they're saying they're going to turn people around, they could do the remaining

02:38Mexico. That would be a stronger policy. Uh, they could do the state department or recalcitrant

02:43country policies before that. If people come in or recalcitrant country, they could turn

02:47them around quickly. They could do department of justice actions that if you're a repeat

02:52offender coming across multiple times, that's a felony. They could be prosecuted as a felony

02:57rather than just being released in the countries. All of those things they could do for free.

03:01They don't need additional money at all for those things. Those are things they could

03:05already do. They're choosing not to do any of those, but they're announcing some big

03:09change that they want to be able to put in place that they know the court's going to

03:12join immediately on it so they can then say at the end of it, we tried to do something

03:17on it rather than do the things that they know would be effective right now. So I'm

03:21going to hope that something actually works on this because we desperately need this administration

03:26to take immigration seriously and what's happening on our border. My challenge to them is enforce

03:31the border. You've got the same law president Trump had the same law president Obama had.

03:36If they enforce the law, they don't want to enforce it like president Trump did. If you

03:40go back to president Obama, we had half a million people illegally crossing a year,

03:44half a million. Now we have two and a half million people illegally crossing. If this

03:49administration will just do what president Obama did, that'd be better than what they're

03:53doing. But right now this administration's continue to be able to wave people in. They've

03:57created a crisis and now literally months before an election, they're trying to be able

04:01to put out a statement to say, here's how we're going to fix it in ways they know are

04:05not going to be either allowed by the courts or will take months and months and months

04:09to actually implement on it. So I hope I'm wrong. I'm willing to be able to see the rest

04:13of the details on it. But as I read through the initial proposal, I'm extremely skeptical

04:18on how they're going to implement this and what they're going to do in the days ahead.

04:21But I'll continue to track it like everybody else does at this point. I'll let you know

04:24what I see when I see the rest of the details.

Republican Architect Of Bipartisan Border Bill Reacts To Biden's Immigration Executive Orders

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