Sen. Cotton: Border Patrol Agrees Immigration Policy a 'Total Failure'

The Border Patrol agrees that President Joe Biden's immigration policy is an "utter and total failure," Sen. Tom Cotton, who toured facilities at the southern border late last week with other GOP senators, said Monday.  

"That's the thing we consistently heard," said the Arkansas Republican on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "If you let them in, more will come. Not shockingly, if you say that minors get into the country or that anyone who shows up with a child under the age of 6 gets into the country, guess what? You get more in this country. It leads to the heartbreaking scenes that we have seen in pictures and videos from my colleagues."

Cotton, part of the delegation led by Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, said he observed an "absolute crisis."

"Inside some of these facilities you have small children without even parents there who are sleeping right next to each other in large, I guess you might call them cages," said Cotton. "They replaced the chain-linked fence with plastic walls. But, still, they are packed in tight."

The Biden administration, he added, is addressing the symptoms by asking federal employees to deploy to the border, but it isn't addressing the cause, which is "Biden opening our border and saying anyone who comes here can get in."

But by allowing anyone with a child to enter, that results in "tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands" more people showing up with kids. 

"I spoke to several of them on Thursday night underneath that bridge," he said, referring to a bridge under where families are gathering. "I asked them why they came? Almost to a person, they said to find a job or to get a better life. They didn't say they were facing persecution because of their race or ethnicity or sex or political views or religion. They came because they want a better life."

And that, he said, doesn't constitute asylum under U.S. law. 

"They are coming because Joe Biden dismantled the highly effective policies of the Trump administration," said Cotton. "They could reinstitute all of those today. They could say we are going to turn back everyone who comes to the border because of the pandemic. They can say you have to adjudicate your asylum claims in the first country you enter after you left your country. If you get to the border, you have to remain in Mexico."

Cotton on Monday also slammed the Biden administration's upcoming infrastructure bill, calling it a "Trojan horse" filled with "longstanding liberal priorities," not with money for roads, bridges, and highways.

"We could reach a bipartisan compromise on infrastructure," he said. "We did just five years ago. We got more than 80 votes and it didn't raise taxes. One thing we did was streamline a lot of regulation and permitting requirements that liberals have piled on for decades."

Cotton also made comments backing up statements made by former Centers for Disease Control and Protection Director Robert Redfield, who said in an interview over the weekend that he believes the coronavirus pandemic began after a leak from a Chinese lab and spread from there.

"China has a history of laboratory sloppiness," said Cotton. "They had safety concerns about this specific laboratory as reported by our scientists a couple of years ago. I think the best case is this was an accidental leak from that lab in Wuhan and China should be responsible for it."

He also said he's introduced legislation that will take away China's immunity from lawsuits in the United States from those who have suffered from the pandemic. 

"There are other steps we can take too that will hit China where it hurts, in the pocketbook," Cotton said. "There are many steps we can take both directly and indirectly to make China pay."

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