Opinion
Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) tried to minimize border security issues and suggested the crisis was just as bad under former President Donald Trump.
While the nation has witnessed a well-documented invasion at the border since President Joe Biden took office, Lieu attempted to insinuate the numbers were at crisis levels before his administration took control.
The California congressman posted a headline from the New York Times that stated that the border was at a “breaking point” in 2019 due to 76,000 illegal immigrants crossing in a month.
“Did MAGA Republicans blame Trump?” he asked. “NO. Because Republicans aren’t interested in real solutions.”
RELATED: Jaw-Dropping Videos Show Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants Waiting To Be Processed In Texas
Fox News Reporter Checks Lieu Back Into Reality
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin stepped in and pointed out that Rep. Lieu had actually made the opposite point of what he had intended.
Melugin is often camped out near Eagle Pass, Texas providing harrowing video of the ongoing invasion at the border.
His most recent “shows a mass of thousands of migrants waiting to be processed by Border Patrol after they crossed illegally today.”
Thousands. In a day. The latest reports indicate that 14,000 illegal immigrants had crossed the border in a single day earlier this week.
“Tuesday morning in Eagle Pass. 14,000+ crossed ILLEGALLY yesterday & 26,000+ already in custody – the HIGHEST in US history,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Christmas Day will be WORSE.”
Melugin went after Lieu’s post and noted that it “isn’t the mic drop the Congressman thinks it is.”
“If 76,000 in one month was a ‘breaking point’ as described by NYT in 2019, I can’t wait to see what they write about the December we’re in now, as we are currently on pace to hit 300,000 in one month,” he pointed out.
RELATED: Democrats John Fetterman, Eric Adams, And Katie Hobbs All Take Turns Knocking Biden For His Illegal Immigration Failure
Lieu Just Pointed Out How Much Better Things Were Under Trump
Using Melugin’s claim of 300,000 illegal immigrants in December, the border crisis is roughly four times worse now than it was under former President Trump.
In the same fiscal year as the New York Times post, illegal border crossings averaged about 81,459 per month. In fiscal year 2023, the per-month average has swelled to 206,305.
Even better, the New York Times article that Lieu is referencing points out that Trump at the time was trying “to build an expanded wall along the 1,900-mile border with Mexico.”
The column also notes that under Trump, illegal border crossings were “nowhere near the historic levels of migration seen across the southwest border.”
Why? That would be because under President Bill Clinton in 2000, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border hit 1.64 million. That’s over 835,000 less than we saw under Biden last year.
Representative Lieu might also want to take note that the number of IEDs located at the border in 2019 was zero.
An internal memo issued by CBP warned agents to “exercise extreme caution” and “report any possible armed subjects approaching the border with possible explosive devices.”
The memo was issued after the Mexican military found 10 IEDs in an area near Tucson, Arizona.
Trump, on the campaign trail, has vowed that if elected he would send illegal immigrants “straight back home.”
“They’re sending people that are killers, murderers, they’re sending rapists, and they’re sending, frankly, terrorists or terrorists are coming on their own, and frankly we can’t allow this to happen,” he said.
“So the illegal border crossers are going to be sent straight back home,” he continued. “Those bad ones, especially, and they’re gonna go fast.”
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