At a border security education event on Wednesday, former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan painted a picture of national ignorance to the ongoing border crisis, blaming poor messaging and general obliviousness in the average citizen.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I’ve served for six administrations both Republican and Democrat. So, this is not a right or left thing for me. This is an American thing for me. I’d like to talk about facts,” said Morgan, speaking at Uncensored: The Border Education Summit in the Texas Capitol.

And to begin with, “​there is a complete fundamental misunderstanding about the southwest border.”

“[We’ve] got to get better messaging,” he said. “And we cannot assume that everybody knows what you know because they don’t. … They’re trying to put food on the table. They’re trying to raise a family. They’re disconnected from it. They don’t see the physical manifestations of this entire catastrophic crisis like people in Texas do.”

Morgan says “border security is national security.” Therefore, the focus of the crisis cannot be illegal immigration, as that is only a subset of the issue. Instead, the focus has to be on border security.

“The catastrophic numbers that we’re seeing is [what’s] driving our borders to be open,” said Morgan. “We know that—you know that—as illegal immigration goes up, our ability to secure our border goes down. Why? Because 89 percent of Border Patrol resources are pulled off the frontline, off our national security mission, leaving large areas of border wide open, literally handing operational control over the cartels.”

The majority [of] people do not know that in this country.

Morgan emphasized that “Congress has absolutely abdicated their constitutional responsibility” to secure the border, willfully and intentionally.

Morgan praised Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton for “doing more than any governor or AG in this country.”

“There’s only one person to blame. That’s President Biden,” said Morgan, although he also acknowledged that Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security is an arbiter of disastrous open border policies.

We went from the most secure border in our lifetime to having no borders at all.

Morgan says the biggest lie coming from the Biden administration is their claim that they inherited a broken, dismantled system.

Since former President Donald Trump implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, it “single-handedly led to the 85 percent reduction in illegal immigration we saw by February of 2020.”

“We stopped catch and release. We were no longer releasing individuals in the United States. And you saw the numbers drastically reduced,” said Morgan.

Thus, when the Biden administration discontinued MPP, as well as Title 42 (the public health order meant to protect American citizens from outside diseases), the Asylum Cooperation Agreements with South American countries (ACA), and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tracking and deporting criminal illegal aliens in the interior of the country, they “dismantled it all.”

“So it’s bulls***,” said Morgan. “When they say that they inherited the dismantled system—it’s a lie. They took away MPP, they took away Title 42, they took away the ACA, they have dismantled and totally abolished ICE’s ability to do their interior enforcement [while we’re] at the highest illegal immigration numbers of our lifetime, that we’ve ever seen since 1925.”

“Republicans failed this country,” said Morgan. ​​”Because remember the first two years of Trump’s administration, he had the White House, the House, and the Senate, and Republicans failed to pass a single piece of meaningful legislation that would have stopped about 85 percent of what this [Biden] administration is doing.”

Morgan says the Department of Homeland Security and Mayorkas are “not enforcing the law.”

This is insane. A cabinet level official is not enforcing law, and there’s zero accountability.

Morgan says that not only has Mayorkas lied to Congress about claiming to have operational control of the southwest border but that Mayorkas wants to remove the word “illegal” from “illegal alien.”

If the rates of illegal crossing continue steadily, Morgan estimates that after eight years of a Biden administration, “it’ll be well over 15 million—that would be the fifth-largest state in the United States, just under New York.”

“So, how the hell did we go from 4,000 [under Trump] to 2.5 million [under Biden]? How do we go from that 100,000 in the database [under Trump] to a million got-aways [under Biden] when infrastructure, technology, and personnel stay the same?” asks Morgan.

Policy. That’s it.

Morgan debunked the idea that a person can be for both illegal immigration and border security since when “illegal immigration goes up, a secure border goes down,” due to almost 90 percent of resources getting pulled off the frontlines.

“And we have, on a silver platter, handed operational control over to the cartels,” said Morgan.

“His big thing now is that they’ve developed a safe, orderly, humane system,” said Morgan of Mayorkas. “I probably get more fired up about that lie than any other lie. … First of all, it’s an oxymoron.”

“And second of all, let’s go down the statistics. The truth and the facts shatter another record. Under this administration, CBP has recovered over 1,000 dead migrants,” said Morgan.

I’ve seen pictures of migrants stacked on top of each other alongside the road. Doctors Without Borders and other organizations say up to 30 percent of young women [and] children that make the journey up are sexually assaulted, that parents and the smugglers themselves will give kids as young as 12 years old the morning-after pill because they expect and anticipate they’re going to be sexually assaulted.

Additionally, “This fiscal year, they’ve encountered 66 illegal aliens on the FBI’s terrorist database. Sixty-six. They released, inadvertently, suspected terrorists—took two weeks to find.”

“We got to make sure we talk about invasion,” said Morgan. “It’s not just about physical people. We’re being invaded by drugs. We’re being invaded by criminals. We’re being invaded by national security threats. It’s all of that combined being driven by illegal immigration.”

He said Operation Lone Star has been in place for 16 months, but the border has gotten worse. “Here’s why: Resources aren’t the answer.”

Morgan maintains that as long as illegal aliens are released into the U.S. free from deportation, allowed to work, allowed to send remittances home, and allowed to bring family over, they will keep coming.

He recommends that states mandate the use of E-verify for all businesses, thereby taking away jobs from illegal aliens; tax all remittances leaving the state; and investigate and prosecute the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that are “knowingly and willfully participating [in a] significant leg of the smuggling chain.”

Morgan also recommends invoking Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution to declare an invasion.

If you do that, you’re not invoking immigration law. You’re invoking that constitutional self-help remedy to protect your states. Then it’s game on, then you can do anything you want to protect your states, including returning illegal aliens that are breaking into the southwest border.

As 18 Texas counties have issued invasion declarations, the pressure mounts for Abbott to enact policy change in addition to providing resources.

Sydnie Henry

A born and bred Texan, Sydnie serves as the Managing Editor for Texas Scorecard. She graduated from Patrick Henry College with a B.A. in Government and is utilizing her research and writing skills to spread truth to Texans.

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