During a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) stressed the importance of helping the countries that people are flocking from to the United States.
According to Carper, the “issue” at the border is not a result of the conditions at the border, but rather the countries that are full of “crime” and “corruption.”
“Let me just say — I led a congressional delegation down to the border a month or two ago. And in the middle of March, there was something like 6,000 young people that were being held by Customs and Border Patrol — 6,000. And not very good conditions. They were being held for an average of five days. That number is down to less than 600 people. The young people are all being held by CBP before being turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services to be connected with sponsors, down from five days to something like 24 hours. So, the issue here is not what’s going on so much at the border, but what is going on in these three countries that’s compelling people to risk life and limb to come here. And the reasons why they come here are threefold: Crime and violence, corruption, lack of economic opportunity and hope.”
“If all we do is welcome people to the border to help place them with the sponsors, if we do that, even do that well and humanely, five years, 10 years, 20 years from now people will still be coming from those three countries,” he added. “We’ve got to help them fix the problem.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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