Sen. Lindsey Graham holds press conference on border crisis

very much today i'm going to introduce the secure and protect act of 2021 i'll talk about it in a moment but why the bible administration has lost control of the southern border this time a time to regain control and you have to deal with the dynamic that led to the border being overrun this is not a seasonal event trump's got nothing to do with this this is not trump's fault that's a bunch of bs this is political policy choices that were ill-conceived that have blown up and by administrations face why are there so many unaccompanied minors coming to our country since february january february now through march one of the first things that the body administration did is give an exemption to title 42 deportations for unaccompanied minors title 42 was created by president trump to allow us to send back anyone coming to our border because of the concerns about coveted infection it didn't matter if you came as an unaccompanied child it didn't matter if you came as an asylum seeker family you name it you were apprehended and you were sent back because of coping concerns one of the very first things that the body administration did is give an exemption for unaccompanied minors regarding title 42 that spread like wildfire throughout central america where it is out that an unaccompanied child will not be sent back under title 42 they will remain in the united states as a result they have they've had to build six temporary facilities two more being looked at there's a fox news report i don't know how accurate it is apparently an email from border patrol officials indicating that there is a place in texas donna texas pod 3a was designed to hold 80 people and according to this email there were 694 unaccompanied minors in that facility designed for 80 and there were two agents in charge of 694 children an 867 percent increase over the capacity of pod 3a the numbers are stunning but you have to ask yourself what led to the rise of unaccompanied minors change in policy regarding title 42. what else has led to a surge in people coming to our border the byte administration has done away with the remaining mexico policy the trump administration created a policy that if you're applying for asylum in the united states you would have to stay in mexico until your court date thousands of people were kept in mexico under this policy tens of thousands of people what happened when ward got out that you no longer released in the united states you have to stay in mexico for years to await your court date the flow of asylum seekers almost stopped because people are not gonna pay ten thousand twenty thousand thirty thousand dollars to go to mexico for four or five years they were paying to get the united states to be released and they never show up so it's time to take back the border and the secure and protect act would turn off the flow in my view so what do i do under the flores court decision if a family unit is apprehended at the border claiming asylum or any other situation they can only be the minor children can only be held 20 days which requires you to process the family in 20 days or break it up or release the whole family working with the trump administration a couple of years ago they told me that if you had a hundred days to process families then you could adjudicate the family unit you would not have to let them go you could hold them together in humane conditions and they would be priority in terms of adjudication under the democratic regime families were routinely being released into the country because of the flores decision put the government in a box you have to release the children what do you do with the mom and dad or other adults this hundred day change would allow us to adjudicate the family as a unit and never require us to release them in the united states where they seldom come back for their hearing we have a quirk in our law if you're a minor child from mexico or canada we have the legal authority to send you back to mexico or canada but if you're from a non-contingent contiguous nation like the triangle countries guatemala el salvador there is no authority for us to send the unaccompanied minor back i changed that the secure protect act allows us to send unaccompanied minors back to their home country even if they're not from canada or mexico the biggest change of all is to change the asylum standard that's being abused under the current law if you show a credible fear that's the initial screening standard you are allowed to be processed and have a court hearing on asylum with a mean and half backlog it could take you years to get that hearing the credible fear standard is too low so we change it to increase the requirement to pass the screening test towards more likely than not you're going to be harmed 80 percent of the people pass the credible fear standard but when it comes to final adjudication the final asylum standard only ten percent eighty percent pass the screening test ten percent make it through the adjudication process so what the secure and protect act does it changes the credible fear standard to make it a higher initial screening standard which means that there'll be less people having to wait for a final determination most asylum seekers are not coming because of fear but because of economic distress the asylum standard has been completely abused it is being used by cartels and human traffickers and they're telling these poor folks all over central america once you get to america claim asylum you're entitled to a hearing they will release you in the united states then you can go anywhere you want to go 90 of the people never show up for the hearing and 90 of those who do show up are not allowed asylum the asylum system is being gained the secure and protect act will stop this so i'm hoping that there will be bipartisan support and what we're trying to do is basically say if you come to america you're no longer be allowed to apply for asylum here they want you to apply for us we want you to apply for asylum in your home country particularly for your child and if you show up on our border we're going to send you back to your home country you can apply for asylum there then we'll give you a court date here you can show up for your court date but you won't be released within the united states if you're an unaccompanied minor from the triangle nations you will be sent back to your country you will not be processed here i am convinced if this bill became law and we had a three-year timeout in accepting claims inside the united states making sure their people apply outside the country in their home country or some international refugees refugee center that we can set up in mexico or someplace else that this flow will stop literally overnight if we don't do that the worst is yet to come so then i'll take some questions how are you possibly going to be able to get this past the finish line i'm sure you shopped it around a little bit what's been the reaction from the other side very positive from republicans adapting silence from democrats and the democratic party has to admit that trump's not the problem here they are the body administration by giving an exception to unaccompanied minors from being deported under title 42 has created a flow problem that we haven't seen before because ward is out in central america if an unaccompanied minor gives to the united states they're not going to be sent back most of them are released in the country and again they never go back to the home country once it got out that the remaining mexico policy has been abolished the number of people coming to seek asylum is going through the roof so you'll never change that dynamic until you change the law so i will talk to senator durbin here in a bit i am for dealing realistically with people who've been here for a long time i'm for doing something with the dream act population doing something for tps folks count me in for trying to deal with people who've been here a long time with no place else to do it to go the price is to control the border we're not going to legalize one person under these conditions can you imagine what would happen if the congress actually passed the dream act without addressing the underlying problems at the border there would be a run on our border like you've never seen before if it got out hey a million people just got legal status who'd been here for decades don't you think people in throughout the world particularly the northern triangle would take that as an incentive to come so we cannot possibly pass any legalization legislation until we regain control of the border i'm not asking for merit-based immigration i'm not asking for fundamental overhaul of the immigration system to do the dream act i'm asking to stop the pull factors that are leading to this surge before we even have a serious discussion about legalization senator graham i wanted to ask you actually about the saudi proposal for yemen to solve the um the crisis in yemen and what you i haven't read all the details but i appreciate it being made i think it's a step in the right direction and i'll get back with you about but the fact that that there is a proposal is is encouraging and i want to congratulate the buying administration for getting that to happen so you said you're interested in doing something again on the dream act but you have reservations because of the situation it's not reservations i'm not going to do anything on the dream act or any other legalization legislation i have supported in the past until we get control of the border how do you get control of the border you have to let unaccompanied children know that they're going to be sent back to their home that the people who send them on this perilous journey that the end result will be they will be sent back to their home country and they can apply for legal status in their home country you've got to reins reinstate the remaining mexico policy you've got to let asylum seekers know that you will not be processed in the united states you'll be processed outside the united states you will not be released in the united states before your court hearing if you don't do those two things there is no space to get any deal on immigration how do you think president biden has governed so far after knowing him for so many years and do you think what's going on at the border right now makes it more likely president trump might jump jump in and see an opening again in 2024 well the political implications of letting the border spiral out of control are real for the democratic party this is one of the reasons that president trump won in 2016. people were frustrated with having a immigration system so easily gang gained so president biden is in denial i was there almost what seven or eight weeks ago now what did i tell you when i came back i was a one-man band this thing is going to blow up in our face the policy changes are going to lead to a run on the border like you've never seen when i was there okay when did we go a couple of weeks ago about mid-february i came back and i was talking to anybody that would listen to me man this place is going to deteriorate quickly you know who told me that the border patrol and customs agents they're the god bless them can you imagine what it's like to be in charge of 694 children packed in a room meant for 80. can you imagine the coveted concerns that come from this i saw it on their face they'd had control of the border the trump policies worked into a person every one of them told me we're going back to the old way of doing business but it'd be worse this time they knew what was coming and i've been trying to tell people up here it is coming well i was more right than i thought i would be and here's the good news there's a way to fix this all you have to do president biden you don't have to listen to me go to the border yourself talk to the people in charge of the port of entries the border patrol and they will tell you what you need to do to stop this flow and if you can stop this flow i will sit down with you and any other democrat to see if we can deal with the dreamers but we can't do that until we stop the flow so president trump this helps him i think it hurts the country i don't know the political ramifications yet it depends how this movie ends if they continue to blame president trump rather than understanding this was a self-inflicted wound then they're going to be in trouble you're going to see democrats up in 2022 have to pick between defending the indefensible or breaking with biden how do you fix this you lead president biden vice president harris owe it to the country to go to the border and see for themselves what's going on are you going to the border again yes i went by myself the first time now we need a big plane so everything that i talked about in mid-february about the policy changes are beginning to overwhelm the system has come true and again the solutions are simple but politically difficult if you believe in open borders you would not do what i'm doing if you believe in controlling the border this would be the first thing you do we need to finish the wall where the wall makes sense but people are trying to get caught they're not trying to come in under the fence or over the fence they're going to the first border patrol agent a point of entry they can find and they're turning themselves in they're claiming asylum because now they know their claims will be processed in the united states not mexico and when the dhs secretary says the border is closed nobody believes him because the word is out that you get to stay in the united states six facilities have been created to hold unaccompanied minors uh in the last six weeks two more are being created you're on track for over a million people to come to our border and they're not coming to avoid detection they're coming to get caught they're coming to claim asylum and gain the system and the byte administration has turned on the faucet it had been turned off and to expect an immigration bill to pass in these circumstances is just complete denial of the reality that exists in the country and at the border if we legalize one person without doing this first you would have multiple millions come 500 new immigration judges is that enough is this a starting point okay so we have uh over a million people waiting for asylum judication 500 judges will help but when a family comes if they are caught today my goal is to make sure they remain in u.s custody they get priority in terms of adjudicating their claim that we change the credible fear standard to more meaningful that they're not separated they're adjudicated we have a hundred days if their claim is honored they can stay if not they go back my goal is to make sure that every unaccompanied minor that shows up to our border is sent back to their home country until you do that we're not going to have control of this when they go back to their home country we'll set up a system that they can apply for asylum in their home country and we can adjudicate that without them having to take this dangerous journey and then one sort of off topic on in the wake of the two mass shootings you've said that do you think some things can be done on gun legislation in congress what can be done and is there any interest of yours also in reprising mansion to me uh well number one the idea of banning assault weapons i don't think has any chance of passing in the senate and i would encourage senator schumer to bring up the assault weapons ban being proposed by president biden let us vote on it i think you would get a uh a majority of senators saying that banning the weapon is not going to solve the problem i own an ar-15 on it responsibly senator coons and i think toomey have a bill that i could support that if you fill a background check we need to notify the local police there are a lot of people who've been a adjudged in a court of law mentally danger to themselves or others that are not in the current background system i would up to a million people i would certainly try to put those folks into the system but um again it's a right to own a gun responsibly in this country and i think that's uh some area of uh before we could reach agreement and some and some democrats have expressed that they may possibly use the filibuster as poss as a as kind of a breaking point in order to be able to get gun control measures passed well all i can say is that democrats have used a filibuster a lot during the trump years and they filibustered the cruz grassley proposal that would have beefed up background checks and really focused on criminal misuse of firearms so they blamed the shooter of being you know liberals in this country just assumed it was a white male and most republicans are pretty much tired of this that every time there's a tragedy that is a yet another reason to say that white extremism is the biggest threat to the country and that we need to gather up everybody's guns well it's not going to work it's not working with the american people again the instrumentality in question is not going to be the solution a lot of this is mental illness that was not detected not treated but i would like to beef up the background system in a credible way yeah i just want to ask how much do you think trump and other republicans rhetoric calling the coronavirus the kung flu and china virus contributed to this rise in hate crimes against asian americans just a spanish flu i don't it came from china the chinese communist party the biggest oppressed group in china the chinese the chinese communist party are horrible to their own citizens they deny them the basic freedoms and rights that we take for granted so the fact that the the flu the excuse me covered 19 came from china is just a fact and i don't i don't buy that okay anything else thank you be speaking out a bit yeah after playing low recently is that some of the advice that you sort of gave him to weigh in on these races on these some of these races or how do you think it's going to keep going well i think president trump is the most consequential republican in the country he's the leader of the party for us to be successful in 2022. we're going to need his help his leadership i've been encouraging him to use his power to put the best team on the field in the states that matter you see him speaking up now more on policy i think he's i talked to him last night he's very really astonished that they would let it get this bad so soon that he thought that biden would take a slower approach that they would not turn on the magnets as quickly as they have to illegal immigration and what does this say the fact that the democrats blame trump says a lot about their playbook no matter what the problem trump caused it they caused this they changed policies that were working when they gave an exception to title 42 deportations for unaccompanied minors it spread like wildfire that's why you have so many when they get do away with the remaining mexico that's why you have more asylum seekers so the fact that president biden has not visited the border is pretty astonishing to me i was there in february i've i talked to the dhs secretary yesterday i said my friend i would like to work with you i would like to do something for the dreamers but we can't do that until we regain control of the border and it's got to be a real clear action not just message you can't say the borders closed the only time this is going to change is when the planes land with the children on the plane back into the country where they left from the only way this ends is when the people who show up to claim asylum never get to stay in the united states for a period of time to break this surge on the border if you're not willing to do those two things then you'll never regain control of the border and you'll never have a successful immigration reform legislation because you would have to be delusional to believe that legalizing people now under the current situation would not lead to more illegal immigration a run on the border like we have not seen before so i don't know what it is over there i don't know why they're so resistant to working with people to fix this problem but it is my view that this is becoming the most dominant issue in the 2022 election cycle in february i said if there are no changes immigration will be more politically potent in 22 than it was in 16. and here's my goal not to make it a political issue to fix the problem to do the hard things there are people on the right that would not ever want to legalize anybody period most republicans want to make sure that we deal fairly with those who've been here a long time but we address the underlying problems of legal immigration that's not an unreasonable request there used to be democrats who understood to get legalization on the table you had to address the underlying causes of legal immigration those voices have been silenced the open borders crowd is now firmly in control of immigration where is aoc why aren't you at the border looking at the things being reported if you were worried about children on trump being in bad conditions this is worse if you're worried about people having coveted outbreaks this is the biggest covet spreader in the entire country so where are you thanks i'm just giving you crap because you gave me crap when i came in you're so mean thank you so much not you jason oh man i thought you're actually apologizing you're nothing for trouble you

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Length: 26min 55sec (1615 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021