Jeh Johnson: So Many People Are Coming over Border that It Is ‘Not Feasible to Keep Track’ of Everyone

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson stated that we cannot “keep track of” everyone coming across the southern border, even with additional resources, because the number of people coming across the border is so large.

Host Andrea Mitchell stated, “[W]atching those people just scrambling for whatever supplies, scarce supplies that they could get, is heartbreaking. And it shouldn’t happen. The wealthiest country in the world should be able to feed, clothe, house, and process…migrants to this country. This is a decades-old problem. There are 2 million cases backlogged. And why can’t we — we can say it’s political gridlock. But there is money in the budget available, discretionary money that could be thrown at this, hire people, process, and –.”

Johnson cut in to say, “When you have people coming across our southern border in these numbers, even with the additional resources we have now, it’s simply not feasible to keep track of them all. And the backlog in cases just grows and grows and grows and communities along the southern border are forced to absorb these large numbers. And then it becomes, as you know, a political stunt by the governor of Texas, the governor of Florida…sending people to here in New York, to the bus station, to Massachusetts Avenue, to Martha’s Vineyard, to Chicago, wherever else. And it should be done at a national level, in a more organized fashion where a number of states share this burden and take on this population, much like we did with refugee resettlement seven, eight years ago.”

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