WASHINGTON – At the weekly Republican leadership press conference Tuesday, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) slammed the Biden administration’s self-made crisis along the southern border, noting that illegal crossings and fentanyl seizures have skyrocketed since the administration eliminated the effective border security policies put in place under the Trump administration.
CLICK HERE to Watch Blunt’s Remarks
Following Are Blunt’s Remarks:
“Well, on the border, as two of my colleagues have already pointed out, the administration managed to bring attention back to their failures at the border by talking about these outrageous settlement numbers.
“The contacts at the border in the first nine months have been five times as high as they were during the Trump administration, in the year when the Trump administration was most challenged at the border. 1.5 million encounters already this year. Fentanyl seizures are up about two and a half times what they were in 2020 on a monthly average.
“From day one when the administration decided, ‘we’re going to stop building the wall. In fact, we’re not even going to replace the wall if it’s temporarily down while a barrier was being built to replace it. We’re going to stop all of that.’
“There is more than one place along the border where essentially those big gaps in what had been previous border barriers have become a funnel that both people and illegal substances are coming through.
“This is a crisis, even though on [October] the 19th the nominated head of the customs service refused to say it’s a crisis. Americans know it’s a crisis. Drawing attention to it is a good thingfor looking at the problem. It’s a bad thing for the Biden administration when people begin to look at this problem and a number of others.”