This week, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., joined “Hannity” on Fox News to discuss the crisis on America’s southern border and its risk to national security.
Rubio said the following.
On the current state of the southern border:
“Our border is not just insecure, it’s a migratory crisis of epic proportions, without precedent in American history. This has never happened before in the history of this country.
“First of all, the administration is lying. They know for a fact that trafficking networks that have links to terrorist groups are involved in the trafficking of people. It’s a business they have, and they move people around the world and they get them into the U.S. But tell me that an Islamist-linked network that moves people that are willing to pay the money isn’t also willing to move terrorists or think about it this way.
“Last year, over 900,000 people in a 12-month period entered the United States illegally and were released into the country by the Biden Administration. 900,000 people. If just one-tenth of one percent of those people are terrorists, that is 900 terrorists that have crossed the borders, and those are the ones that we actually saw come in and processed and released into the country.
“This border is wide open and everybody in the world knows it. That’s why they keep coming. Look, it angers any country to see people from other places showing up at your border, demanding to be let in. Having people in this country argue that somehow they have a right to come in and not just have a right to come in, but we have an obligation to now provide billions of dollars, which is what they’re asking for, okay. In this whole deal that they’re asking for in a supplemental, they’re not asking for money to enforce the law.”
On Hamas sympathizers infiltrating through the border:
“It is an unsecure border across which anybody from anywhere in the world can come. Maybe some of those people, when they get here, have Islamist sympathies, and they’re not necessarily terrorists. They don’t consider themselves that way. But then they come here, they see the headlines, they hear the call to action, and they get fired up, just like people that are born in this country that are out there now supporting Hamas. Imagine people that already come with that preconceived idea about it being inspired to a lone wolf attack, which is the number one threat.
“In fact, the FBI director said today that Iran has tried to conduct operations inside this country. We know for a fact that Hezbollah has invested in the same capability, the ability to attack Americans here in the homeland for assassination, for mass casualties as a point of leverage against us, just like these attacks by proxies in the Middle East is a weapon they have. They know that conducting attacks in the United States is another weapon they can threaten us with if they think we’re going to do something to them. This is a serious crisis.”
On how illegal immigrants are using America’s immigration system:
“They’re playing a word game with us. The first thing they’re saying is ‘The law is being complied with.’ What they’re arguing is that we have asylum law. Someone crosses, and they claim asylum. They claim the law says, ‘We have to let them in. We have to let them stay until they get a court hearing,’ that many don’t show up for. So they’re arguing they’re following the law. What they’re not telling you is that’s how they interpret the law, and how that law is being interpreted by migrants, such as ‘all we have to do is get into the US, say the magic words, we’re going to be released, we’re going to be released, and we’re going to be sent to any city we want to, and they’re going to pay for it.’ And that’s what’s driving this incentive for people to come. And everybody in the world knows it.
“And the other lie they keep saying is we have a broken legal immigration system. The main thing that’s broken about our legal immigration system is that it is cheaper, faster, and easier to come illegally than it is to come legally. Imagine if you’re someone out there that has been waiting for ten years because you applied for a visa, and you’re waiting, but somebody you know came here illegally and is now maybe even on the verge of getting residency. Imagine what a sucker you feel like.
“We are incentivizing people to come here illegally, and this administration refuses to enforce the law. That’s why, no matter how people feel about Ukraine, people come to us and say, ‘How can we deal with that without securing our border first?’, ‘How can that not be a priority before anything else that we do?’ They [the Biden Administration] have poisoned the well on an important policy matter, because people look at that and say, how can we deal with that until we deal with this right here at home?”
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