Lankford Presses Biden Admin Officials for Answers on Why Our Southern Border Is Not Secure

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s opening remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s opening remarks on Rumble.

CLICK HERE to watch Part 1 of Lankford’s Q&A on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Part 1 of Lankford’s Q&A on Rumble.

CLICK HERE to watch Part 2 of Lankford’s Q&A on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Part 2 of Lankford’s Q&A on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today participated in a Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management hearing, in which he served as Ranking Member, to continue to push Biden Administration officials on their broken immigration policies that are facilitating illegal immigration. The hearing entitled “After Apprehension: Tracing DHS Responsibilities after Title 42, gave Lankford an opportunity to press Administration officials on how they plan to secure the border and prevent those who pose national security risks from entering the country.

Lankford specifically called out that there remain several items the Biden Administration has not provided to respond to requests from Lankford and other Senators, including the timeframe for providing a special-interest alien briefing to Senators, additional information on Notice to Appear delegation of authority, and a specific briefing on the Administration’s Circumvention of Lawful Pathways regulation. Lankford also asked the panel numerous questions on the way asylum seekers are brought into the interior of the country and how our broken asylum process is facilitating illegal immigration, which remains a major national security threat.

Witnesses for today’s hearing included David S. BeMiller, the Chief of Law Enforcement Operations Directorate (Border Patrol) at US Customs and Border Protection (CBP); Matthew Davies the Executive Director of Admissibility and Passenger Programs in the Office of Field Operations (OFO) at CBP; Daniel Bible, the Deputy Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Andrew Davidson, the Acting Deputy Director at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Lankford continues to push for bipartisan, common-sense solutions to secure the border, including efforts to strengthen Border Patrol and stop human and drug trafficking. Lankford visited the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona earlier this year and recently exposed DHS for cutting down border wall materials. 

Excerpts

On the fact that Oklahomans and Americans are all wondering when the border will be secure

Lankford: Everywhere I travel in Oklahoma, I have someone that stops me and asks me—whether its urban or rural—how’s it going on the border? What’s happening with the system?’ People are concerned. There’s 6 million people that have been encountered coming across our border just in the last two and a half years and people are exceptionally concerned about that.

On why this hearing is needed and what Lankford is looking for

Lankford: Just tell us how decisions are made and what the process is because this is a very, very new process and we’re seeing record numbers of new people. The numbers dropped off dramatically after Title 42 changed and then they accelerated again to numbers, as Washington Post listed, that literally our country has never seen the numbers that were coming in for family units in August, and we’ve seen this skyrocket and we’re trying to understand the decisions being made and what that looks like on the ground.

###