Rep. Adam Kinzinger, after coming off deployment with the Air National Guard to the southern border over the two weeks, said he backs President Donald Trump's emergency declaration, as the situation is not a matter of immigration, but of national security.
"We saw a lot of groups coming across the border illegally, but we also saw a lot of drugs," the Illinois Republican, a pilot and lieutenant colonel who has been flying missions over the Arizona border, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" Monday. "We saw a lot of human trafficking."
The lawmaker said one of his crews pulled in 70 pounds of methamphetamine on its first mission, and that he himself found a woman abandoned in the desert.
Kinzinger said he does agree that the nation's ports of entry are an issue, but he had patrolled an area of Arizona that did not have walls, and the majority of work was done in the state's mountains to look for coyotes and drug mules, and that is the hardest place to put Border Patrol officers.
"Don't let people tell you mountains or rough terrain prevents people from coming over," he said. "The exact people bringing the drugs and human trafficking over that will use that route because they know Border Patrol has just as hard of a time."
Kinzinger said he was upset to learn while leaving the border, that the Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers had quietly pulled all guard troops out of the Tuscon sector.
"He hasn't even announced it because I don't think he has the courage to do it," said Kinzinger.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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