RFK Jr. highlights the Biden administration's failure, stresses it's 'not that hard' to seal the border — and Trump's wall is part of the solution
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has once again called out the Biden administration for its catastrophic failure to secure the nation's southern border, stressing that sealing the boundary is "not that hard" to do — particularly when President Joe Biden's predecessor managed fairly well.
Kennedy, Biden's top rival ahead of the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, dispelled mischaracterizations about his positions advanced by the liberal media and answered pressing questions about America's restoration at the NewsNation town hall Wednesday night.
The mediator, NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas, referenced the comments Kennedy made earlier this month after he had traveled to Yuma, Arizona, to survey the fallout of the Biden administration's border policies.
"This is not a good thing for our country. It's not a good thing for these people. And it's unsustainable," Kennedy said in a June 6 cellphone video, with illegal aliens from China, Peru, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Cameroon reportedly behind him.
The Democratic presidential candidate also told NewsNation's Ali Bradley in early June that the border under Biden is a "dystopian nightmare" that clearly could have been prevented, in part by bolstering defensive infrastructure, leaning on Mexico and Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants, and entertaining a baseline willingness to enforce the law of the land.
Following Vargas' invocation of Kennedy's earlier claim that the border is a "dystopian nightmare," Josue Pasillas, the son of Mexican immigrants, asked the presidential candidate about his plan to address immigration.
"I don't think that it's going to be possible to get an immigration reform package through Congress until we seal the border," said Kennedy. "In the last three years, 7 million people have come across the border illegally. ... The cartels are now running U.S. immigration."
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 1.6 million people stole into the U.S. between October 2022 and May. Between October 2021 and September 2022, roughly 2.4 million illegal aliens were encountered at the border, and there were another 1.7 million encountered during the same stretch the previous fiscal year.
"The cartels are now advertising all over the world that there's an open border and they're bringing people in. They give them videos about exactly what to do. They fly to Mexico. They're given visas there, internal visas in Mexico. They go from Mexico City on a plane to Mexicali. They're loaded on fleets of buses and then brought to the border and they cross," said Kennedy.
Contrary to Vargas' suggestion that many migrants are ultimately ousted, the Democratic candidate stated, "Illegal immigration — everybody gets in. I watched it."
"The only role of the Border Patrol is to stamp them in and check if they have a criminal record. If they don't, they are brought to the airport and they are given a ticket to any city in the United States that they want to go to."
Although Kennedy has previously emphasized the adverse impact illegal immigration has on America, particularly on its poor and working-class citizens, he highlighted during Wednesday's town hall that under the Biden administration, illegal migrants shuttled over by the cartels are "being exploited, they're being extorted, they're being raped, they're being robbed."
After Kennedy impressed upon the audience the dire nature of the border crisis, Vargas pressed him for a remedy.
"It's not that hard," said Kennedy, admitting former President Donald Trump's wall will be part of the solution and highlighting how illegal border entries were a tiny fraction during Trump's tenure of what they are now.
"I was against Trump's wall, but having seen it down there, I see that ... we're required to give a physical barrier," said Kennedy. "Certain highly densely populated areas, you need a physical barrier."
Kennedy indicated that while it is advisable to fill in the gaps, it is untenable to build a border wall all the way from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas. Instead, along vast stretches of the "hinterland," he indicated he would install ground sensors and towers "like they do in Israel."
Kennedy said that, as a Democrat, he was "very embarrassed" by the actions taken and policy changes made by the Biden administration, which have resulted in the global "presumption that everybody gets in. ... No nation can survive if they can't protect their borders."
‘Not that hard’ to seal the border, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says | RFK Jr. Town Hall youtu.be
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