Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan was before the Senate today on the crisis at the border.
During his questioning, Senator Blumenthal falsely claimed that border crossings are at historic lows.
But McAleenan quickly responded, telling him that we are much closer to historic highs than we are to historic lows.
In the video McAleenan points out that we’re on pace to hit over 750k crossings this year, countering the Senator’s false claim. He says the highest in the modern era was one million crossings in 2006.
But even then, Blumenthal still tries to play it down by suggesting we may not get to 750,000 this year. McAleenan essentially points out that we can’t ignore the evidence of what’s happening, telling Blumenthal “We have to confront what’s happened in these five months…” He then notes the 60k+ numbers from October to January and the 76k+ that came in February, and suggested it’s worsening.
But I want to note something else that McAleenan said that didn’t get much air. He told the Senator that illicit drugs are coming increasingly between ports of entry, but Blumenthal countered with his Democrat talking point that illicit drugs are primarily still coming in through the ports of entry. McAleenan responded “that’s where our seizures are made”. Blumenthal just ignored him.
But isn’t that the point? We only know what’s coming in at ports of entry because of the seizures being made. We have no idea what’s coming over (or under) the border between points of entry because those areas are much harder to patrol. Maybe it’s less illicit drugs, but maybe it’s MORE. The point is that it’s absurd for Democrats to pretend that the illicit drugs coming in between ports of entry aren’t that big of a deal and therefore we don’t need a wall.