Obama’s DHS Secretary: “We Are Truly in a Crisis” at the Southern Border
Written by Trevor Grant Thomas
No less than Jeh Johnson, who served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration from 2013-2017, has declared the situation at our southern border a “crisis.” Best of all, he did so on MSNBC.
Refusing to take the political bait from “Morning Joe’s” Mika Brzezinski when she condescendingly asked, “Do these proposals [from Kirstjen Nielsen, Pres. Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security] even come close to representing America?” Much to Mika’s disappointment, Johnson replied,
When I was in office in Kirstjen Nielsen’s job at her desk, I’d get to work around 6:30 in the morning and there’d be my intelligence book sitting on my desk, the PDB, and also the apprehension numbers from the day before. And I’d look at them every morning, it would be the first thing I’d look at, and I probably got too close to the problem. [M]y staff will tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number. And if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was going to be in a bad mood the whole day. On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis.
The fact is, over the last several years, we have made great strides in border security. With the support of Congress, total apprehensions by Border Patrol – which are a direct indicator of total illegal attempts to cross the border – have gone down substantially in recent years. In FY 2000, Border Patrol apprehensions were at a high of more than 1.6 million. In FY 2013, Border Patrol apprehensions dropped to less than 420,000. That number will increase somewhat in FY 2014, owing to the spike in migration this summer in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which has now receded to at least FY 2013 levels. The overall decline in illegal migration over the last 14 years is due in very large measure to the unprecedented levels of personnel and resources we have dedicated to border security. Today there are 20,000 border patrol agents (compared to 15,000 in 2008), 652 miles of fencing and barriers (compared to 267 in 2008), 9 unmanned aircraft systems (compared to 4 in 2008) and 12,722 ground surveillance systems (compared to 6,712 in 2008) all devoted to this Nation’s border security.
With the help of Congress, we must and we will continue this good progress.
Note that “good progress” includes an increase of over 140% in border “fencing and barriers.” Of course, President Trump is trying to continue such “good progress” when it comes to border security, but lying liberal hacks in the Democrat Party and the left-wing media stand against such efforts. Good for Jeh Johnson for telling them some truth!
This article was originally published at TravorGrantThomas.com.
Tags: Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mika Brzezinski, Morning Joe's, MSNBC
Federal Issues, Immigration, Uncategorized | David E. Smith | 
April 1, 2019 7:35 AM
