Congressman: New fence around Capitol means we 'ought to continue our fence on the border'

Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, co-chair of the Congressional Border Security Caucus, said the new fence that now surrounds the U.S. Capitol demonstrates that the U.S. "ought to continue our fence on the border."

The 7-foot fence was added after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 and has not come down yet. There have not been any incidents at the Capitol since the fence was put up. 

"The same people who tell me that fences don't work on the border want to have this fence and turn the Capitol into a military compound," Biggs said during an interview on the "Just the News AM" show. "So we don't know of any existing, emergent threat to the Capitol, but we do know of an existing, emergent threat to our nation through the border, people crossing the border illegally that are coming across," Biggs said.

"There's two things here: They built a fence because they know fences actually do work, so we ought to continue our fence on the border," he said. "And the second thing is, they came in with overwhelming military personnel. So they had an overwhelming amount of personnel to respond as a secondary response, if anybody tried to breach the fence, we don't have that on the border." 

Biggs said Congress needs to make sure that there are enough agents on the border working with "a substantial fence" to address illegal crossings, human trafficking, drug smuggling and others issues.

"If you don't control your border, you really don't have national security," he said. "It's very easy for anybody to get across our border today."

There are physical barriers on about 450 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S. Mexico border. Biggs was asked if Biden's decision to halt the additional physical barriers at the border has helped or hurt national security.

"I think it has done serious harm," answered the lawmaker, who recently visited the border in person. "And we will start seeing the extent of that harm in the next few weeks and days to come because, look, just being down there with agents, everybody we talked to — whether it's farmers, agents, ranchers, whatever — they all said that barrier had been instrumental in slowing the the traffic across their land and illegal entry into the U.S., and since we don't vet everybody who's coming into this country illegally, I think [halting barrier construction is] going to be a real security problem." 

Biggs was also asked if Republicans will try get funding for additional physical border barriers added to a future budget bill or comprehensive budget bill proposed by the Democrats.

"We will certainly try to put forward that idea," he said, "but basically, the Democrats have said to us, 'You can either come along with us, or we're going to do this without you, because we don't need you. We have enough votes in both houses, and we have the presidency.' They don't really care. In fact, you just need to take a look at what they're taking money away from — the border fence, and they're also reducing funding in other areas that would also provide help along the border."