Show Notes
In the past 36 months, US Border Patrol agents have caught an unprecedented 336 people who were on the US government’s list of known terrorists from crossing the southern border into the United States.
That might sound like good news, but it isn’t. On the most recent episode of the DrillDown podcast, Mark Morgan, the former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection and a former assistant director of the FBI explains why.
Morgan was among ten former FBI senior executives who signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-KY) and other members of Congress raising the alarm on national security threats from the massive wave of illegal immigration.
“In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now,” the FBI luminaries wrote. “Military aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands – not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.”
Morgan joins co-host Eric Eggers and Seamus Bruner, author of the recent book, Controligarchs and VP of research at the Government Accountability Institute, to explain further.
“In the last 36 months, there have been 8.9 million border encounters logged. Of those, about 5.9 million are single males, and the majority of them are of military age,” Morgan said.
Beyond the 336 on the “watch list” for known terrorist activity, there were another 1,000 that were stopped at regular border checkpoints, he points out. However, there were tens of thousands of so-called “special interest aliens,” which means they come from countries known to harbor terrorists.
He also noted that there are more than 1.8 million “gotaways” in the past 36 months, since the administration of President Joe Biden began.
Asked if he would characterize this as an “invasion,” as some have called it, Morgan said, “It’s already here… We don’t have the ability to properly vet who’s coming in, and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas is lying when he says we do.”
“While I was on the border in 2020, I had a press conference and was asked about what (then candidate) Joe Biden was saying,” Morgan tells Bruner and Eggers. “I had to be careful because of the Hatch Act, but I said that if those policy changes he was talking about were made, they would cause a level of lawlessness and chaos at the border.”
As a former FBI executive, Morgan sees more than a national security threat. There is an invasion of drugs, terror, and cartel activity from Mexico that threatens the safety of all Americans.
Eggers wondered if the amount of money involved in all that business made the problem too difficult to truly solve.
“It does. We need to go after the cartels with the same commitment and resources as we have used with terror groups. And the FBI’s efforts for the last three or four decades have failed,” Morgan replied.
He further assailed the influence of non-government organizations (NGOs) that facilitate the entrance of illegal immigrants into the United States, specifically mentioning the group Catholic Charities, LLC.
“Our nation’s compassion has been hijacked,” he said. “Illegal immigrants go from the custody of the border patrol agents to the offices of NGOs where they are given tickets to wherever they want to go in the US,” paid for in part by funding those NGOs receive from US taxpayers. “They are facilitating the cartels’ business,” he added.
Turning to the politics of the problem, he said, “both parties are at fault, but the Democrats see two political benefits. Forst, illegal immigrants are counted as “residents” for purposes of the decennial Census, which helps those blue states that are losing residents. Second, the Democrats believe every illegal immigrant will eventually become a Democratic Party vote…. I’m not onboard with so-called ‘replacement theory,’ but this is about power and votes for the Democratic Party,” he said.
As Mayorkas faces an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, President Biden has said he will secure the border, if Congress gives him the authority. Morgan responds that Biden already has the authority, but deliberately rescinded the policies of his predecessor upon entering office in 2021, including the “remain in Mexico” policy and other steps that stanched the flow of illegal immigrants into the US. But he blames Republicans as well for not enacting laws to secure the border when they had control of both the White House and Congress during the first half of former President Trump’s administration.
Morgan is now affiliated with an organization called Border911 that seeks to influence US border security policies.
