Surging Republican Blake Masters blasted Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), his opponent in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, for his inaction on border security while appearing on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday as the Department of Homeland Security reports more than 227,000 illegal migrant encounters at the southern border last month.
While responding to host Matthew Boyle’s question about the staggering influx of September border crossers, Masters called out Kelly, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “caus[ing] the crisis.”
“What’d they think was gonna happen when they threw open the border and forbade our brave men and women of border patrol and ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] from deporting anybody? They welcomed illegal aliens in and incentivized them. ‘Come on in. Not only will we not deport you. We’ll pay you cash, hotel rooms, bus tickets, plane tickets.’ And so yeah, they caused the crisis,” said Masters.
“These are the highest September numbers ever in recorded history. This is the highest year-over-year number ever, 2.4 million illegals that were apprehended, right, but ICE can’t deport them, so those 2.4 million are here to stay,” he continued. “And then there were another 600,000 getaways that we know about. What about the getaways we don’t know about? So all told, Joe Biden and Mark Kelly’s policies let in three million illegal aliens into America in just the last 12 months. I think the correct amount of illegal immigration is zero. My opponent, Mark Kelly, thinks the correct amount of illegal immigration is three million per year. This is just so crazy. They’re open border policies. They’re illegal. They need to stop. And I think all these people deserve to lose their jobs just for this dereliction of duty at the southern border alone.”
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Boyle followed up by asking the Trump-endorsed candidate what kind of effects the enormous surge of immigration under the Biden Administration in such a short time will have on America’s essential societal systems, including public schools, hospitals, and the economy. Boyle also asked what this means for crime in America.
“I mean, it’s almost hard to know where to start,” Masters responded. “You mentioned the hospital, the hospitals, the emergency rooms are getting overrun. These folks don’t have insurance, and so the burden for their care when they go to the emergency room – that’s coming on you, that’s coming on me, the American taxpayer. You mentioned the schools: yeah, the schools are overrun, but remember, these folks aren’t just coming from Mexico; they’re mainly coming from Mexico. They’re coming from 140 different countries: Yemen, Bangladesh, the People’s Republic of Georgia, and they don’t all speak English or Spanish. And so what are teachers supposed to do when these kids arrive and all of a sudden the class of 30 or 40 kids is speaking like 12 different languages? It’s absurd.”
“The whole border zone is a huge crime zone,” he continued. “The cartels have operational control. There’s a humanitarian aspect to it, of course. The women and children who are trafficked by the cartels are horribly brutalized. The men are sold into some kind of modern-day slavery, indentured servitude. The crime is climbing; homicide in Phoenix is up 50% since 2019; homicide in Tucson is up 87% since 2019. Sometimes those crimes are perpetrated by illegal aliens, sometimes they’re not, but even when they’re not, it’s just the lawlessness at the southern border. Everybody looks and sees that the government’s not just enforcing the law, ‘So hey, we can get away with anything, right?’ And this petty crime, it climbs, and it becomes very serious assault, rape, kidnapping, murder, carjacking.”
The Republican, who former Vice President Mike Pence has called one of the GOP’s “brightest stars,” also pointed out that American taxpayer dollars will foot the bill for the social programs used to provide for illegals, and drew a contrast between how American veterans and service members are treated.
“And then just the economic burden, the economic burden, as these people who come here, they’re given cash, cell phones, they’re put on welfare programs. It just strains the system,” Masters explained. “And it’s breaking, and it breaks my heart because you drive by a public park, right, and you will see U.S. military veterans suffering, homeless, in need of mental health care that they’re not getting. These people were the cloth of the nation. They stood and were willing to sacrifice their lives for our country, and we’re not treating them nearly as well as we treat three million illegal aliens coming into our country. Our priorities are just backward, and I’m not going to stop until we have a secure border. It’s just insane what Joe Biden and Mark Kelly have let happen. They’ve turned every county in America into a border county.”