Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) blasted President Joe Biden’s administration for not prioritizing Americans’ safety in its immigration policies.
The first-term congressman lamented Biden’s direction in securing the border, claiming his efforts are not enough. August’s total number of people apprehended for illegally crossing the border or reported as evading capture was at least 261,327. This was the greatest number reported that month in U.S. history, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data on record.
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“This is why this administration and my colleagues on the other side infuriate me because they play politics with border security, and they put politics above the safety of Americans,” Crane told Mornings with Maria on Wednesday.
As a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Crane said the other members argue about the effectiveness of a wall at the border. Meanwhile, Biden has since issued an announcement to construct 20 more miles of wall on the Texas border.
On the first day of Biden’s presidency, $8.5 million had been put toward the wall, with another $2 million that former President Donald Trump had redirected from the Pentagon going unspent and ultimately being returned. Instead, the $5 million allotted by Congress toward its infrastructure will now fill the 129 gaps in the wall.
“It’s not just a wall by itself — it’s a wall, it’s agents that are well trained, it’s intelligence, and so many other things that work in coordination to keep Americans safe. And you can tell this administration wants nothing to do with keeping Americans safe by their actions and their policy changes,” Crane said.
While he personally pledged his support to Israel, Crane lamented that it has distracted his colleagues.
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“To me, this is one more time where many members of Congress and our leaders look to something else, an atrocity going on in the world, and they completely drop the ball and forget about what’s going on here,” Crane said. “They forget about our wide open border, the 240 individuals since Biden took office that have been on the terror watch list that have been encountered at the southern border, and the 1.5 million gotaways. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know where they’re going, we don’t know what they’re up to. And if you don’t think there’s any lone wolves in there or terrorist cells that have come in through that wide open border, you’re a fool.”
In Arizona alone, there have been over 490,000 encounters at its border.
