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Thune on Fox News: Bipartisan Senators Urge Administration to Avoid Southern Border Catastrophe

“This is just absolute insanity, and it’s got to stop, and Democrats are pleading with the administration not to do this …”

April 7, 2022

Click here to watch the interview.

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined The Story with Martha MacCallum on Fox News to discuss the bipartisan disapproval of the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42 policies at the southern border. Earlier today, Thune helped introducebipartisan legislation that would prevent the administration from lifting Title 42 border restrictions without a coherent plan in place to stop the inevitable surge of migrants.

 

On the dangers of the Biden administration’s historic border crisis:

 

“This is just absolute insanity, and it’s got to stop, and Democrats are pleading with the administration not to do this …”

 

“They got other policies that they're extending, including masking for children under five at Head Start facilities, which is another sort of insane policy.

 

“But nevertheless, this issue with the border is going to be a huge problem on a humanitarian level, on a national security level, on a law enforcement level.

 

“Because as you know, in addition to people who are trying to come here because they want to come to this country for maybe the right reasons, there's a lot of criminal activity, a lot of trafficking, drugs, weapons, human sex trafficking across the border, and the number-one killer in this country of people 18 to 45 is fentanyl.

 

“Where's it coming from? Mexico.”

 

On the Biden administration’s contradictory COVID messages:

 

“The messages being sent by the administration with respect to the pandemic are so contradictory, and asking for additional funding to deal with the effects of the pandemic at a time when you're saying, okay, we're gonna throw open the border, and we're gonna have literally tens of thousands of people, we don't know their vaccine status, we don't know their health status, coming across this country.”

 

On how repealing Title 42 border policies will incentivize illegal immigration:

 

“Title 42 has been successful in keeping about a million people who are trying to come here illegally in this last year from coming into the country.

 

“When you start opening the floodgates, you are going to create incredible incentives and put up a welcome sign, and people are going to start coming in droves.

 

“And that is just going to flat overwhelm our border states, but every other state is going to start seeing the effects of that when the numbers and the, you know, the volume swell to what's being predicted if they move forward with this policy change.”