Sen. Lindsey Graham, after his tour at the United States' southern border with fellow GOP senators, is slamming the Biden administration for staging a "giant cover-up" of the "massive system failure" as immigrants surge into the country.
"I can understand why the Biden administration would not want the American people to know what's going on," the South Carolina Republican told Fox News's Sean Hannity Monday night. "We'll have half of Central America in the United States in a year if we don't change these policies."
Graham, along with a delegation of almost 20 fellow Republican senators, toured border facilities late last week and told Hannity Monday that the conditions in which migrant children are being held are "terrible," and that he observed people who were going to be released quickly into the United States.
"I saw 200-plus women and small children being processed in front of me," Graham said. "They were going to be released into the United States within 8 hours."
He added that he saw children with numbers on their wrists, which means they have family members in the United States who are sending money to Central America that's used to hire smugglers to bring those children north.
"They hire a human smuggler, a human trafficker to get them to the border," said Graham. "Once we catch them, your tax dollars are used to reunite with family. This is not catch and release. This is catch and reunite. They call the family member, the number on the child's wrist, and the American taxpayer pays to reunite the family who is here illegally. It will send the wrong signal."
Graham said that he was warning about the coming migrant surge even during President Joe Biden's transition into office.
He said he was being told by Border Patrol officials that Biden would be changing outgoing President Donald Trump's policies on unaccompanied minors, and ending the "remain in Mexico" policy that required incoming migrants to stay south of the border while their asylum cases were pending.
Meanwhile, Graham said he's never seen as many incentives for illegal immigration as there are under Biden.
"If you have a family member here illegally, we're going to pay to reunite the family illegally," said Graham. "If you're 16 and younger, we're going to make sure you never leave the country. If you have a family member here illegally, we're going to pay to reunite the family illegally. That incentivizes people. Within two weeks you're released into the United States without a court date."
This means by summer, "we'll have 150,000 (people) per month," said Graham. "If they don't change the policies, nothing will change. It's only going to get worse."
Meanwhile, the Border Patrol is being asked to "do something that is impossible," because half of them are processing illegal immigrants rather than enforcing the law against "drug smugglers and traffickers and terrorists trying to get into the country."
"They are overwhelmed and if we don't change the policy the worst is by far yet to come," said Graham. "It's really heartbreaking."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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