WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined Kudlow on Fox Business to discuss the historic crisis that will result when Title 42 is eliminated by the Biden Administration and his legislative efforts to keep the policy in place and strengthen it.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the dangerous risks of ending Title 42: “I think right now, [Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer has figured out that we’re going to push back very hard on this. We’re going to do everything we can to make certain Title 42 stays in place. I’m trying to actually strengthen it. And I think what we’ve found is that there are Democrats who are vulnerable that realize that they’re going to have to step up and side with us, too, because their voters, their electorate, are not going to understand this… What [President Joe] Biden is trying to do is create basically an avalanche of humanity. He sent out a gold-plated invitation to come and cross our border illegally on May the 23rd. Larry, just last Friday, I was down at the border. I spent three days there with our border patrol. And that night, on Friday night, when I was there with the border patrol agents as it was announced that the Biden Administration was going to remove Title 42 on the 23rd of May, you could just feel a cloud of depression sinking over the room. The last tool that they have to fight back, to turn back, this wave of illegal immigration, this wave of illicit drugs that are coming across the border and killing our kids. This national security crisis that’s seen, over the past 14 months that Biden has been in office, 157 different nationalities apprehended at that border—a national security crisis of a proportion that we’ve never seen. There’s a very thin line trying to fight this, and Biden is crushing it on the 23rd of May. We’ve got to stop it.”
Hagerty on his legislation to expand Title 42 authority: “Well, to not get too bogged down in the technical details, we’ve got to make it germane, which we’re working on the language to do that right now. I want to actually expand it [Title 42] beyond the public health concerns that are mentioned, like, you know, we’re using it with COVID right now. You can use it for tuberculosis. I think the greatest public health concern right now is what’s killing our youth—that’s drug overdoses and deaths from drug overdoses. A hundred thousand American youth were killed last year due to drug overdoses. So, drug smuggling is going to be what I’ve tried to add in my legislation as another reason to be able to expand this and make it positive, make it certain that it can’t be lifted.”
Hagerty on the humanitarian crisis he witnessed at the southern border last week: “I tell you, if I could get Democrats to come to the border and see what I saw these last three days, I mean, this is a crisis of epic proportions. Again, we know about the drugs that are flowing in and killing our kids because that’s happening in every town, every county. It’s happening in Tennessee. It’s killed thousands of youth just last year. But if they could see what’s happening to these migrants that are coming across—what I saw were unattended children. I saw young women who are obviously the victim of sex crime and trafficking. This is a humanitarian crisis of massive proportion. And I think if the American public can see it—and thank you for talking about it, Larry—if the American public can come to understand this, we will not tolerate it. The Biden Administration is essentially partnering up with the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and with the major Mexican drug cartels. These are billion-dollar enterprises that are partnered with the CCP to essentially wage war on American youth with their drug trade. They’re using these migrants as a way to deflect and bog down our border, you know, our border officers. So again, they have free flow of this drug trade and illicit human trafficking that’s going on in other parts of the border when our border guards get overwhelmed. So, this is an important message. One that you understand so well, Larry, because the CCP has its fingerprint on every one of these overdose deaths that’s happening in America.”
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