Lankford Calls Out Biden for Looking The Other Way While Crime Skyrockets

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble. 

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today pushed back on Biden Administration’s backward policies that are causing rising crime rates around our nation and how they affect our families and our law enforcement. Lankford pointed out in his remarks that, while President Biden and his Administration are being soft on crime and unsupportive of law enforcement, families of law enforcement officers in Oklahoma and Oklahomans around the state stand by law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day.

Lankford continues to express support for border law enforcement personnel who have told him they feel they are “handcuffed” by DHS leadership who tell them what immigration laws they can and can’t enforce. Lankford went down to the US-Mexico border in Texas to meet with border law enforcement directly and see what they’re being forced to deal with because of Biden’s open border policies. In a press conference, Lankford highlighted that Biden’s lack of leadership and enforcement of US law at the southern border is the greatest profit-maker for the Mexican drug and human smuggling cartels.

Transcript

Look I don’t know what Democrats were thinking when they started this whole process of ‘defund the police,’ when they said to law enforcement, ‘You’re the problem, not the criminals.’ When they said to people that are committing small crimes, ‘We’ll just look the other way and consider that you just had a tough upbringing and so we’re not going to pay attention that that,’ and assume nothing else happens.

I don’t know what they expected when they launched out sanctuary cities and said, ‘If individuals that are illegally present in the country, if they come to the United States, we’re just going to look the other way and allow those individuals to stay in the country even though they commit crime, after crime, after crime. Literally across the street from this Capitol building, is Union Station, where just this week, a person illegally present in the country, painted swastikas all over Union Station, but ICE didn’t deport them because DC is a sanctuary city and they weren’t getting turned over.

We have a serious problem with just basic law enforcement in this country—that right now, this Administration is trying to handcuff law enforcement and release criminals. We’re doing exactly the wrong thing, time after time after time.

Individuals that illegally cross our southern border are being released into the country, and federal law enforcement officials are being treated as if they’re hotel check-in staff rather than federal law enforcement and told to just wave people through. We’re not getting any criminal history from the countries of origin they’re coming from. We literally have no idea if they have a criminal history from where they just came from. We’re tracking it once they have a criminal history here, but the enforcement is almost none.

And the message now is, if you illegally cross our southern border, when you’re waved in, you’re given your first hearing in six years. Literally being told, ‘You can stay illegally present in the country for the next six years.” And by the way, if you don’t show up for that hearing, they’re already getting the message: we’re not going to pursue you either.

When an Administration has a policy of ‘defund the police,’ when our big cities have district attorneys that are saying, ‘We’re not going to prosecute,’ when our President of the United States determines that illegally crossing the border without getting any criminal background check to come into the country from where they’re from, is acceptable, we’re going to watch crime increase. And as the drugs continue to flow across our southern border, people commit more crime to be able to get more drugs, and it accelerates from there.

There are ways to be able to address this. We’re not asking for something unreasonable. Our families and our communities demand that someone stands up for those victims, not those that are actually causing the harm to the victims.

And may I remind everyone, law enforcement have families too. And so while this Administration decides to be soft on crime, there are individuals in houses today in my state that are hugging a loved one, looking them in the face, as they walk out in their uniform and saying, ‘Be safe out there,’ while this Administration tends to look the other way. That’s backwards, and that’s not what America’s looking for.

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