A migrant caravan coming to the U.S. border from Central America has gotten a great deal of attention this spring, but Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Thursday their arrival is nothing unusual, as hundred of thousands have entered the United States in recent years.
"Since 2013, over 200,000 unaccompanied children from Central America have come into this country," Johnson told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "We're looking at 750,000 children and family units that have exploited our very loose immigration laws by and large in this country."
The United States has gotten good at apprehending and getting people in court, but the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has sent a strong signal to people "that if you get into America, you can stay, and they have stayed," Johnson said. "It creates a greater incentive for more unaccompanied children and more family units coming to this country because of the legal loopholes."
Homeland Security has been watching the caravan's approach, but Johnson said he wants to know why Mexido has not enforced its own strict immigration laws, which are more strict than the ones in the United States.
"Why isn't Mexico helping us?" he said. "They're part of the problem. They're complicit in this wave of undocumented children from Central America."
But the United States does need to fix its own laws, and ask Mexico, through diplomatic channels, to enforce theirs, Johnson said.
"We first need to get our own house in order," Johnson said. "We need to expose what again too many members of Congress don't realize all the loopholes and legal precedents laws that created this flow. Our primary objective should be to stop or reduce the flow and that's working with Mexico and fixing our legal immigration system, our broken system."
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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