Tucker’s discussion with Mark Morgan about what can be done regarding border anarchy was brief but packed with a lot of information. Morgan is realistic enough about open-borders Democrats to understand the current House of Representatives is unlikely to pass the legislation needed to update our very inadequate immigration laws. So he has some stand-alone strategies in mind that he can implement without Congress.
Morgan sounds determined to make a difference, but the numbers are daunting. The Washington Post reported recently that in the last seven months “Nearly 169,000 youths have surrendered at the southern border.” In March and April, the total number per month exceeded 100,000.
These days, kids are a guaranteed ticket to the freebies in the USA, so some adults just rent if they don’t have one of their own.
Plus, a top necessity for the Border Patrol is to return to its job of sovereignty enforcement rather than social work toward invaders. When the Laura Ingraham show visited the border in early May, it was clear that the Border Patrol’s absurdly kind treatment toward lawbreaking foreigners actually incentivized the invasive behavior. Why would any sane person wait years in line to immigrate to the United States in the current permissive environment?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, if Washington finally decides to fix the country’s immigration problem, Mark Morgan will be at the very heart of that. You’ve known from this show. He has been a frequent guest. We’ve been happy to have him every time he’s been on. And he is now the President’s new pick to run ICE.
Mark Morgan joins us tonight for his first interview since starting the job. Mr. Morgan, thank you very much. First of all, congratulations on the new job.
ICE DIRECTOR MARK MORGAN: Thank you.
CARLSON: And thanks for joining us. What are your priorities?
MORGAN: Well, first and foremost, I think anyone in this position is to make sure that I’m going to be a relentless advocate for the men and women of ICE to get the tools necessary to do their job.
And part of what that means also is getting out here doing what I’m doing right now to educate the American people exactly what the hardworking men and women of ICE do every day, to safeguard the security of this country and enforce the rule of law, and also working with Congress.
But here’s the problem with that, Tucker. Congress has clearly showed its inability to do what they know they need to do to fix this crisis. And I’ve been on here many times and saying they could do several things within the legal framework. They could fix this in 15 minutes.
So although I’m going to continue to work tirelessly with Congress to try to get them to do their job, I don’t have hope that they’re going to. So we need to continue to come up with innovative ideas within the legal framework where we can to stop this problem.
CARLSON: Well, they’ve completely politicized your agency completely.
MORGAN: Absolutely.
CARLSON: We’re moving into the heat of an election season. A number of the candidates have called for getting rid of ICE completely, have compared you to the Nazis.
MORGAN: Absolutely.
CARLSON: Really over the top stuff. So given your expectation that they’re not going to help at all, what can you do?
MORGAN: So I’ll give you an example right now. So ICE actually have three major components that the American people and unfortunately, I think a lot of Congress don’t even realize. So they have the ERO side. That’s the Enforcement Removal Operations that deports people.
They also have an incredible team of lawyers. That’s an integral part of the overall immigration process that’s absolutely needed. And then the last part of ICE is HSI — Homeland Security Investigations.
And I’ll give you an example. So those three major components make up ICE.
HSI, for example, what we’ve done is we’ve taken about 150, highly trained, experienced, HSI agents, and we push them towards the border. And what they’re doing is they’re looking at child exploitation. They’re looking at those individuals who are grabbing — renting the kid, right, and we called this, Tucker. We knew this was going to happen, and it is.
They are renting kids. They’re paying to rent somebody’s kid and then fake themselves as a family, and right now between — and we’ve infused the DNA testing that we’ve talked about in the past, so between their investigative skills and the DNA testing right now in the pilot program, they’re finding 25 percent of the so-called families come across — absolutely fake and fraudulent.
Just the other day, they caught a 51-year-old man from Honduras, guess who he had with him as a family? A six-month-old. And because of work at HSI. They found that to be completely false. That’s the kind of stuff that we’re doing and we need to continue to do.
CARLSON: What would happen if we got rid of ICE?
MORGAN: Exactly. So right now, ICE on the ERO side, this year so far, just the first quarter, 66,000 individuals have been deported. Of the arrests that they’ve made, 65 percent of those arrests were actually people with additional criminal convictions.
Ninety percent of those either had a criminal conviction or a pending charge. You get rid of ICE, think about that. So 66,000 not deported. You have just an incredible amount of people who are doing bad things that are going to remain in the United States.
On the HSI component. Last year alone, 34,000 arrests, Tucker — 34,000 criminal arrests. Four thousand, five thousand gangs, human trafficking cases, child exploitation cases, 1.2 billion in currency they seized, and the list goes on and on and on.
So when you have somebody that puts out the reckless, irresponsible rhetoric about ICE being abolished, that’s what’s going to happen. This country will absolutely be less safe because of that.
CARLSON: It’s demented. And I don’t think there’s any popular support for it. I’ve never seen a poll that says most voters, “Yes, let’s get rid of ICE Good idea.”
MORGAN: Absolutely.
CARLSON: Get rid of the FBI along with it.
MORGAN: Right.
CARLSON: So quickly, if Congress is just in a dream world was willing to help you, if Democrats were on the same page in protecting America’s borders — what’s the first thing you would ask them for?
MORGAN: Two things, they have to adjust the legal framework. Right now, there’s two major things. They have to fix the Flores Settlement Agreement, which mandates you can’t hold a family more than 20 days, then plus TVPRA, and that’s the Child Trafficking Protection Act, right?
That says that if you’re from Mexico or Canada, we get to send you back. But if you’re from the northern triangle countries, we can’t. Those two things equal catch and release. Congress can fix those two things in 15 minutes. The second thing is they absolutely need to continue to increase the funding for ICE specifically on the detention bed space. It’s just common, it’s common sense, Tucker.
CARLSON: They don’t care. But you do care and I don’t know a single person who disagrees. You were the right man for this job. And thank you for joining us tonight.
