Former CBP Commissioner: Biden admin's border policies are 'against the nation's best interest'

The Biden administration's policies on the U.S.-Mexico border are inhumane to the illegal immigrants and harmful to America, says former acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan.

Regarding border protection, Morgan told the John Solomon Reports podcast, "This administration is absolutely — has dismantled everything, and everything that they're doing is against the nation's best interest, and I believe it's for perceived political gain."

According to unofficial statistics of illegal border crossers, Morgan said, "I think within the last 10-11 days, they actually had a single-day encounter of over 6,000. Have you seen that officially? Has anyone in [the Department of Homeland Security] reported that? No. Six thousand! They're averaging, now, anywhere between probably about 4,500 to 5,000 a day."

"But here's the truth, and here's the stat they're not presenting officially: 75% of the so-called unaccompanied minors are older teenagers — 15, 16, 17 years of age," Morgan said. "They're not being ripped from their parents. They're making a tough decision on their own to leave simply because they want a better job in the United States." 

He also talked about how many illegal immigrants are being released into the United States.

"Do you know how many people that DHS has mandated and forced CBP to release?" he asked. "No, because it hasn't been officially released. It's over 20,000. Twenty thousand have been released since January, but they still get out there and say, 'Oh, we're still removing people' — under, by the way, the Trump-era Title 42 policy.

"But here's another thing: It's a blatant lie," Morgan said. "The secretary's still out there saying that they're removing most families. John, it's a lie. It's an absolute lie. But yet, they're not officially giving the numbers, right, to back up that.

"What I know is, on — right now — the 21-day average that they are actually releasing between 50-80 percent of the families that they're actually apprehending on a day. So not only they're not providing that statistic, but they're lying to the American people about it."

Morgan explained that CBP had warned the Biden transition team what their proposed border policies would entail.

"I mean, there's clips of me doing hits on TV prior to election, where I said, if any administration is elected that says what the Biden campaign had said they were going to do, it would cause a crisis that would make 2019 pale in comparison," he said.

"After the Biden team won," Morgan continued, "we — I mean, exhaustive briefs of the transition teams — exhaustive, John, where we warned them, if you dismantle the tools and network of policies in place, you would create another crisis, and that the Border Patrol facilities were not adequately prepared for it. That [the Department of Health and Human Services] wasn't adequately prepared for it."

He added that the Biden administration is acting like those conversations never happened, which Morgan said is a lie.

"They're making it seem like those conversations didn't happen, that that transition didn't happen, that those warnings didn't happen. It's a lie. I know it happened," Morgan said.

"They were warned, and they disregarded the border security experts, and they let their ideological hubris prevent them from from listening to what was happening, and now look where we're at. And of course now, because it is a crisis, and we all know it's a crisis, they start playing the blame game. It's outrageous."

Morgan said that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lied about the southern border being secure.

"So, and this is one of the most disgusting lies — lie — that came out of the mouth of the DHS Secretary when he said, quote, 'The southwest border is secure.' … And the 63,000 men and women of CBP on the frontlines of our nation, on the southwest border, know that's a lie."

"And part of the reason why it's a lie, is that when you encourage, incentivize, and facilitate illegal immigration, and the numbers of unaccompanied minors and families skyrocket, that pulled Border Patrol agents away from the frontline, away from the national security mission, and leaves large swaths of the border open — we saw that in 2019."

Morgan explained the smugglers' strategy in 2019 that he says is being repeated now.

"The smugglers used the families and unaccompanied minors as a distraction," Morgan said, "knowing it will take an intensive amount of resources of the Border Patrol so that they can then, what? Smuggle, illegally, drugs and criminal aliens across the border easily and more effectively. It happened in 2019, and it's happening now.

"You're going to see an increase in drugs that are getting by and other illegal aliens …They are estimating right now daily average is anywhere between 800 and 1,000 immigrants are illegally entering the border and getting away because of, right now, agents are being pulled off the line to deal with the humanitarian side of things. Almost 1,000 a day."

Morgan said that the number of illegal immigrants being housed in CBP facilities has skyrocketed since the Biden administration took office.

"In November of 2020, we had less than 800 in our CBP facilities," he said. "Now the number is 10,000 and growing every day."

The humanity of incentivizing illegal immigration is also concerning, Morgan said.

"What is humane about a United States actively participating in encouraging, facilitating illegal immigration, where independent studies have showed up to 30% of them are abused on their way up here, they're traveled through COVID hotspots?" Morgan asked.

"They're shoved in overcrowded, unsanitary stash houses and tractor trailers, left in the middle of the Rio Grande and desert environment by the coyotes to fend for themselves and they often die or have to be rescued by the Border Patrol. How is that humane? And the answer is, it's not."