Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan joins Lou Dobbs on the Great America Show to discuss the Biden administration s failure to secure the southern border, and the increasing number of illegal immigrants pouring across the border.
00:06:06.740President Trump, your former boss, made it very clear.
00:06:10.880He was ready to go to war on the cartels.
00:06:13.820He was ready to launch missiles, as the left-wing media sort of snarked,
00:06:19.720against those targets in Mexico, for the good of Mexico.
00:06:23.820And, point of fact, this government will, at some point, have to go after the cartels,
00:06:30.580if they're going to be serious, about stopping the cartels, the collateral damage of at least 100,000 Americans every year to drug overdoses.
00:09:55.680They know what's happening, but they're driven by their personal ideology.
00:10:00.060And they don't care about the second, third order negative effects.
00:10:02.920And I keep saying, how many more Americans have to die and how many more migrants have to die before this administration reverses course,
00:10:11.260or we force them to, or the states step up and fill the void left by this administration?
00:10:16.700Well, let's talk about that for a minute here, if we may.
00:10:20.380Mark, we're looking at a new Mexico, a different Mexico than we had seen just a year and a half ago.
00:10:30.480So suddenly, Lopez Obrador is now no longer talking about, no longer does he have 26,000 soldiers out working with the United States trying to stop illegal immigration.
00:11:44.940Look, I was there in the administration under President Trump.
00:11:48.480And I can tell you, as a commissioner, I benefited from the strength from President Trump.
00:11:54.500And he used that strength and position of global power to leverage that, to really drive Mexico to step up.
00:12:01.180As you accurately said, at one point, Mexico had 25,000, 26,000 personnel that were deployed to address this global illegal immigration crisis that we had.
00:12:11.820Mexico strengthened their southern border.
00:12:13.760They increased their interior enforcement.
00:12:16.080And they supported our efforts that really helped to secure our borders as well.
00:13:33.280Lopez, I want your insight into something.
00:13:35.720I'm really surprised that Lopez Obrador is talking about the United States should remove the Statue of Liberty, Breitbart reporting the story, if the United States proceeds with the extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
00:13:55.420Yeah, Lou, I think it goes back to what you were saying overall.
00:13:58.760I think that if President Trump was still in office, Mexico's president, he wouldn't be making these kind of overstatements, in my opinion.
00:14:25.980They feel emboldened to step out, get across their skis and push back in this country with issues in this country that, quite frankly, they shouldn't be getting involved in.
00:14:40.460And I'm very, frankly, I'm torn on the issue of Julian Assange because I'm not sure I understand entirely why this Justice Department, which is a politically corrupt entity without question, is so engaged on Julian Assange and the revelations that originated on WikiLeaks.
00:14:59.960Because the Marxist left in this country that is driving the Democratic Party wants to shut down in every way possible the American people's right to know.
00:15:13.020We need to have outlets that are revealing what our government is doing, and we need to know precisely why they are proceeding, because we're not getting that answer from the corporatists, left-wing news outlets, all of the broadcast networks, certainly.
00:15:28.940And most of the cable news outlets as well.
00:15:35.640Look, I think what's really challenging for me, honestly, I've devoted my entire adult life to public service.
00:15:42.360As you know, I spent two decades in the FBI.
00:15:45.240And I'll be honest with you, it's painful for me.
00:15:48.160But the fact is that in this country, the public's trust in law enforcement, including what I think used to be, you know, I believed as the most premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI.
00:16:01.400The public's trust has been impacted, even in the FBI and across the board, because of the perception of the politicization, as you said, of the Department of Justice, and using the FBI as a pawn to carry out some of the things that they've done.
00:16:17.740And I think that does a disservice to this entire country.
00:16:20.220I think this country understands clearly now, certainly Republicans and independents understand it, that this is a Justice Department, this is an FBI, that has decided that the American people are their enemy.
00:16:35.580And they are treating us as enemies rather than those who should be grateful to them for their public service.
00:16:43.380Indeed, their public service amounts to a war on the right, on conservatives, on the Republican Party, decency and tradition in our heritage.
00:16:55.700It is breathtaking to me, Mark, to see what this Justice Department has become.
00:17:01.240We have hundreds of citizens as a result of the January 6th demonstrations and rally, and some of them certainly guilty of trespass, at the very least, when they went into the Capitol.
00:17:18.840And we've got people who've been in jail for a full year and a half since that event.
00:17:23.540And the Justice Department and the judges, I mean, they're overcharging and over-sentencing in almost every instance.
00:17:32.800Yeah, and Lou, I think what's frustrating for me and what's frustrating, I think, for a lot of Americans is the duality nature of what this administration and this Justice Department is doing, right?
00:17:43.760I think we're all on board with any violation of the law has to be met with fair, firm, and adequate justice, right?
00:17:51.560I think the challenge is, is when we look at what happened, for instance, as you're talking about January 6th and what has transpired after that, I remember back in the summer of 2020, right?
00:18:01.820Remember when reporters, the mainstream media, really extension of the Democratic Party, were literally standing in towns and cities with buildings burning to the ground behind them, and they were referred to as mostly peaceful protests.
00:18:15.880I remember that as a commissioner of CBP, I sent resources, agents and officers, you know, to the federal courthouse in Portland that was being attacked every single night, and they were literally trying to burn down the federal courthouse.
00:18:28.760Kind of another important symbol of American justice.
00:19:16.160When we look at what is happening, illegal immigration, we have candidates for the U.S. Senate saying that there is no crime in crossing that border, that it's perfectly fine, that we should not.
00:19:29.080And it's just the ignorance of it all.
00:19:33.160And the Justice Department that won't prosecute Antifa, BLM, because they're just rioting and burning businesses and homes to the ground.
00:19:45.680And they will prosecute January Sixers because they were standing on the Capitol grounds, which, by the way, is not a crime.
00:19:52.980And they are pursuing as zealots they are, ideological zealots, Marxist left zealots, these poor people and not no one.
00:20:05.820And by the way, I'm critical of the Republican Party here as well.
00:20:09.220They should be standing up, my God, doing something for these poor people ensnared in this political persecution.
00:20:17.520Yeah, I think that's part of the Americans' frustration.
00:20:20.200I think they're seeing a good look behind the curtain.
00:20:47.380Heck, he's got court orders from a judge, and he's ignoring those as well.
00:20:52.900And he's actually trying to remove the word illegal from illegal immigration, kind of like the individual we just talked about before, the politician.
00:22:13.420Why is it that these planes carrying these illegal immigrants by the hundreds of thousands and distributing them across the country in the middle of the night?
00:22:24.880How is it that we can't find anything out about who they are, what they're doing, who's paying for them, who's paying for those planes?
00:22:33.400Why are they being taken to the locations they're they're being taken to?
00:22:37.500And who is supporting all of these illegal immigrants that have suddenly got first class charters to a destination unknown to all of America?
00:22:51.460I can tell you I've been working with some members of Congress, not all, because I agree with you.
00:22:56.180This just is this isn't just a failure of the Democrats.
00:22:59.200This is a failure of Republicans and Democrats.
00:23:01.320But what I'll tell you is right now there is a failure in the immigration law.
00:23:05.240So the law says right now that the federal government, there is no requirement or mandate that they actually have to tell states who they're dumping off into their states, which is just outrageous.
00:23:16.260The second thing is, is the reason why these flights are going on, most of them in the middle of the night, is because they're trying to deal with the bad political optics of overcrowded facilities.
00:23:25.540And the fact that they're releasing, like you said, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens locally into the communities and they're overwhelming them.
00:23:32.500So instead of securing our borders and dealing and reducing illegal immigration, all they're doing is processing and push them into the interior to relieve the bad political optics on the physical border themselves.
00:23:43.340And look, what's what's happening is taxpayers are funding the majority of this.
00:23:48.640NGOs, non-governmental organizations are assisting this government.
00:23:51.980What I've been saying is really complete, completing the last leg of the smuggling operation.
00:23:56.820You know, before the smugglers and the cartels, once they got illegal aliens across the border, they still had to get them to their final destination.
00:24:05.420They don't have to anymore, Lou, because the federal government is subsidizing NGOs to do it for them.
00:24:12.540And as you and I both know, there are nonprofits and NGOs, non-governmental organizations, who are working hand-to-glove with the Marxist left in this country to subvert our immigration law, our refugee laws, and to take matters into their own hands.
00:24:35.160And by the way, undercut or just utterly ignore, as you point out, the states themselves, and they become subservient to the will of NGOs and nonprofits, which is sort of a cop gas moment when you think about unelected officials in non-government organizations and nonprofits are actually in charge of making public policy decisions,
00:25:01.400particularly in cases of national security, the people who are entering this country illegally and who are being welcomed by some while they are competing with the rest.
00:25:14.980Look, NGOs, they have culpability here.
00:25:18.120The Catholic Charities, people don't want to talk about it, but the reality is the Catholic Charities is one of the largest violators right now of that.
00:25:24.720And we keep saying this is about border security.
00:25:27.740And what the Catholic Charities refuse to acknowledge, and they're not being honest with American people or those that provide them with donations, is, again, when you facilitate, encourage, and basically provide a roadmap for illegal immigration, you are making our borders less secure.
00:25:46.100Again, 90% of agents are pulled off the front line doing administrative duties, hospital watch, transportation, and processing.
00:25:53.120We have literally handed operational control of large areas of border to the cartels.
00:25:58.460So when these charities, these NGOs, think that they're helping migrants, what they're really doing is killing Americans.
00:26:04.040And the last thing I'll say is the worst thing we can do is have open borders, not just because threats come into our country killing Americans, but it's also the most dangerous thing for migrants.
00:26:14.040So far, Lou, under this administration, more than 700 dead migrants have been found at our border.
00:26:19.280Again, young women and children are sexually assaulted and abused on their journey.
00:26:23.740They become victims of trafficking and associated atrocities with that.
00:26:27.500Have you heard a single word from this president, Secretary Marcos, or any of the NGOs about the dead migrants and the atrocities that they suffer?
00:27:33.140We need to get people back in Congress, going to do the right thing to secure our borders.
00:27:36.760But until then, we really need to push states to continue to step up and do more.
00:27:41.500Governor Abbott and A.G. Paxson of Texas, they've done more as governor and attorney general than any other governor and attorney general in this state.
00:27:48.880But we need to continue to do more at the state level.
00:27:52.820Mark Morgan, former Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.