Sunday on “Fox News Live,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) discussed his recent visit to the United States-Mexico border with a group of his colleagues.
Braun described the border crisis as lacking “humanity,” which he said was the most “shocking” part of his trip. He hammered President Joe Biden for undoing former President Donald Trump’s policies and thus laying out the “welcome sign.”
“As Lindsey [Graham] said, the squalor, the lack of humanity was shocking,” Braun recalled. “But the thing that got me more than anything … is the system behind it punctuated by around midnight when we got there Thursday, going down to the Rio Grande, and being heckled by the coyotes and smugglers at the Border Patrol folks. I asked what were they saying. They were saying whatever you do, we’re going to keep coming. The immensity of the issue and the sophisticated system behind it — that’s something you don’t hear. And that is that most of these kids coming across already have relatives here that have crossed illegally — $4,000 a person.”
“It is like a travel agent being a coyote or a smuggler, and then the thing that really got me is because we think it is just Central Americans, Mexicans, all trying to escape obviously a life that is not good to them. And that is a deeper consideration we need to make, but in the Del Rio sector, recently, 54 different nationalities have come across the border. That is how broad it is,” he continued. “And if you’re from a certain country, it can be up to $20,000. A billion to $2 billion a year industry, run by coyotes and smugglers, and it’s got a loop that will just continue, especially with the welcome sign out there when Biden for the sake of politics only, took a system that was working to at least not encourage people to come on the journey; now, we got this. It was an eye-opener that all of us were shocked by.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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