JUST IN: Lankford Supports Tulsi Gabbard and Pushes for More Border Security

CLICK HERE to Download the Remarks on Box. 

CLICK HERE to Watch the Remarks on YouTube.

Oklahoma City, OK – Senator James Lankford (R-OK), member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today joined NBC’s Meet the Press to talk about border security and President-elect Trump’s nominations.  

Excerpts:

Welker: Let me ask you about Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence. You have said that she needs to clarify where she stands on 702. And just to let our audience know what that is, that’s a critical intelligence gathering authority. She consistently opposed it when she was in Congress, but here’s what she said this week. She came out in support saying, quote, “If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people.” Are Mrs. Gabbard’s assurances enough for you, Senator? Are you now a yes on her?

Lankford: Yeah, I am and that was a very important piece for me. 
Obviously, she voted against 702 authority. And just to clarify that, that authority is for actually trying to be able to track terrorists overseas and has nothing to do with American citizens or anything happening in the United States. It is if someone’s planning to attack us overseas, we find out about that, we should be able to act on that. That’s what 702 authority allows us to be able to do is to be able to international individuals overseas before they come and actually attack us. She voted against that in the House when she was a member of the House of Representatives and then said she wanted changes. She’s now coming in and saying, those changes have been done because even since she was in Congress, there have been quite a few changes that we’ve made in Congress to make sure we’re protecting the civil rights of Americans. But when she came out and said, “Hey, this is something I’m going to stand for” – that’s part of the role of the Director of National Intelligence is to make sure we’re actually watching for people to come attack us and stopping them before they do.

Welker: Let me ask you about a top agenda item for President-elect Trump, his mass deportation policy. In my one-on-one interview with him, he said that is agenda item number one. 
He said he wants to deport everyone who is here illegally. I want to ask you, Senator, do you agree with that? Is that your plan to deport everyone who’s here illegally? 


Lankford: Well, to be very clear, if someone has violated the law in the United States, there should be consequences for violating the law in the United States. I’m not going to come out and say, “Hey, if someone breaks the law, we’re just gonna look the other way.”
That’s not who we are. We are a nation of laws. If we have a law, we should enforce that law. That’s who we are as Americans, and I think that’s one of the one of the things the president made very clear when he said down with you in that great interview was we have to. This is the law of the United States, we’re going to do that. He also made very clear he’s going to go after people that have committed additional crimes here in the United States. He’s going to go after people that a court has already said to them, they have to be removed. We have over a million people in the United States right now that a federal court has already looked at their case, examined the facts and said no, you have what’s called a final order removal, you have to leave the country. But they haven’t left the country. That should be the first priority for those individuals.
There are some that are still working through their asylum cases and such. Let them work through their cases on that. But once a court has said you have to leave, we can’t just ignore a court order.

###