Speaker of the House Mike Johnson commented on the nation's southern border crisis during a Wednesday appearance on CNN.
The Speaker recounted a record-breaking number of illegal migrants entering the country daily during his appearance on the outlet with CNN anchor Jake Tapper. Johnson, who spoke from Eagle Pass, Texas, listed off illegal migrants entering the country and referred to some as "known gotaways," along with those who "evaded" capture by border patrol, though Tapper pushed back when the Speaker mentioned reports of terrorists entering through the southern border.
“Jake, seven million people have come into the country since Biden walked into the Oval Office,” Johnson said. “And that’s a low estimate — most people believe it may be twice that high. We have nearly two million ‘gotaways’ that we know about, not to mention those who evaded capture.”
“Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border, trying to come in,” Johnson continued. “We don’t know how many evaded capture and detection — they’re in the country, potentially setting up terrorist cells everywhere."
Johnson said fentanyl — the number one cause of death for Americans aged 18-49 — was being brought into the country "like an open sewer."
“Human trafficking is the number one business of the cartels here,” Johnson added, noting that cartels were raking in roughly $32 million from human trafficking, amounting to upwards of $1.5 billion per year, according to a local sheriff. "Transnational criminal organizations, and the Biden administration seems to care nothing about it."
Johnson noted the Biden administration could issue executive orders to "fix this overnight."
"You could reinstate the ‘Stay in Mexico’ policy, you could stop the catch and release policy that the Biden administration insists upon," he continued. "You could do some very important things, but they refuse to do it."
Tapper pushed back on the Speaker saying there was "one note on the terrorist thing."
“There aren’t hundreds of known terrorists getting into the country, there are people whose identity have been flagged on a certain database," the CNN anchor said. "I just don’t want people out there thinking that … 200 members of Hamas have flown into the country and we don’t even know about it.”
However, Johnson noted the database referenced by Tapper is the Terrorist Screening Database, often referred to as the "Terror Watch List," and reiterated, "These are dangerous people coming into the country."
