Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., disputed Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ assertion that there is no “crisis” only a “challenge” at the southern border, telling Newsmax TV on Thursday that law enforcement is already being “swamped.”
“Yeah there’s a crisis all right,” said Biggs, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus of conservative Republicans whose 5th Congressional District is just southeast of Phoenix. “You just have to call down to line agents and talk to a number of them like I do. You need to talk to people who live along the border like I do on a regular basis.
“The policies that this administration is putting forward is actually opening up and causing people to come down. Cartels are advertising again. Caravans are forming again. They’re massing on the other side of the border. And when Mayorkas says ‘You can come, just don’t come yet.’ They don’t hear the ‘don’t come yet.’ They hear the ‘you can come.’ Bad message.”
Biggs, who also heads the Congressional Border Security Caucus, said on “America Agenda” that he and caucus co-chair Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, have asked for a meeting with Mayorkas to discuss the issue.
He said he received a briefing this week that indicated that the number of the unaccompanied children that have attempted to cross the border between Mexico and the United States has more than doubled. He did not say in what time frame.
Biggs said the Biden administration has re-opened the notorious “kids in cages” facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, initiated under the Obama administration and made infamous by media attention under the Trump administration, along with other detention areas that had been “totally empty.”
“They’re moving people from the northern border to the southern border, DoD (Department of Defense) is trying to find out what it can do to meet this demand because they are going to be crushed and they already are being swamped,” Biggs said.
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