House Speaker Mike Johnson sparred with CNN anchor Jake Tapper during a Wednesday afternoon segment addressing the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and record-breaking number of illegal immigrants flowing across it on a daily basis.
Johnson began by rattling off a series of numbers — the number of people who have come across the border, the number of “known gotaways,” and the number who may have crossed the border without being apprehended. It wasn’t until he got to reports of terrorists crossing the border that Tapper pushed back.
WATCH:
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border
JAKE TAPPER: There aren't hundreds of known terrorists getting into the country pic.twitter.com/OupsyawGAX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 3, 2024
“Jake, seven million people have come into the country since Biden walked into the Oval Office,” Johnson said from Eagle Pass, Texas. “And that’s a low estimate — most people believe it may be twice that high. We have nearly two million ‘gotaways’ that we know about, not to mention those who evaded capture.”
“Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border, trying to come in,” he continued. “We don’t know how many evaded capture and detection — they’re in the country, potentially setting up terrorist cells everywhere. Fentanyl is the number one cause of death for Americans aged 18-49, flowing over the border like an open sewer.”
“Human trafficking is the number one business of the cartels here,” Johnson added, noting that cartels were raking in billions of dollars — “$32 million a week,” according to a local sheriff — trafficking people across the border, and President Joe Biden’s administration was doing nothing to even slow them down.
Johnson suggested that there were a number of options Biden could implement, from executive orders to the reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” policy and the end of “catch and release,” that could help to stem the tide — but noted that so far, he did not seem interested.
“So, just one note on the terrorist thing,” Tapper said. “There aren’t hundreds of known terrorists getting into the country, there are people whose identity have been flagged on a certain database, I just don’t want people out there thinking that there are, you know, 200 members of Hamas have flown into the country and we don’t even know about it.”
What Tapper did not mention was the fact that the “certain database” he referenced has an official name: the Terrorist Screening Database — which is commonly referred to as the “Terror Watch List.”
And while it is true that no one can definitively say that everyone on that list is a terrorist, it is also not possible to say for sure that anyone on that list is not a terrorist without proper vetting — something that most can agree is not happening at the southern border.