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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was forced to walk back a claim he made after CNN’s Jake Tapper debunked it live on-air in real time after the Christian nationalist Republican of Louisiana tossed out several unsubstantiated “facts” about the southern border.
Despite having recessed the House until next week, Johnson, along with dozens of Republicans, traveled to Texas Wednesday to see the southern border and ramp up their anti-Biden attacks while furthering their announced agenda to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security. No cabinet secretary has been impeached in nearly 150 years.
“Well Jake, seven million people have come into the country since Biden walked into the Oval Office, and that’s a low estimate,” Johnson claimed. He offered no proof to support that number, nor did he say they entered the country unlawfully.
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“Most people believe it may be twice that high,” he continued. The majority of Americans do not have first-hand knowledge of the number of unlawful border crossings.
The right-wing New York Post in December claimed “3.8 million people have entered the United States through its borders since President Joe Biden took office in 2021 — nearly half of whom slipped into the country illegally and were never caught.” That would put the number of unlawful entries at about 1.9 million, far less than the seven million Johnson tried to suggest.
“We have nearly two million got-aways that we know about, not to mention those who evade capture,” Johnson continued.
“Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border trying to come in,” Johnson falsely claimed. “We don’t know how many evaded capture and detection there in the country, potentially setting up terrorist cells everywhere.”
When he was done spreading his claims about fentanyl (which is mostly trafficked by U.S. citizens through U.S. ports of entry, and not by undocumented immigrants,) and anecdotes about human trafficking, Tapper corrected the Speaker.
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“So just one note on the terrorist thing,” the CNN host told viewers. “There aren’t ‘hundreds of known terrorists’ getting into the country. There are people whose identity have been flagged on a certain database. I just don’t want people out there thinking that, you know, 200 members of Hamas have flown into the country and we don’t even know about it. It’s a little bit more complicated.”
Johnson, appearing surprised and disturbed he was corrected live on-air, interjected.
“Hey, hey Jake,” Johnson interrupted.
“I’m not saying that it’s not serious. I’m just saying these aren’t necessarily terrorists,” Tapper replied.
“That’s the Terrorist Watch List, Jake. It takes quite a bit to make that list, okay? These are dangerous people who are coming into the country.”
In fact, the Terrorist Watch List, officially the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), contains over two million names as of December. Someone’s appearance on the Terrorist Screening Database does not make them a “known terrorist.”
Appearing on the TSDB “doesn’t mean they’re a terrorist,” according to Russ Travers, who CBS News identified as “a veteran of the U.S. intelligence community for four decades who helped create the watchlist.”
“It means there’s something that has led a department or agency to say, ‘This person needs a closer look.’”
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National security attorney Bradley Moss weighed in on Johnson’s remarks:
“Trump’s [White House] tried this a lot. Trump would say they were catching terrorists every day or DHS would say they caught over 3,000/year, suggesting it was all tied to the border. Under oath, they would concede the ‘known or suspected terrorists’ caught were at places like the airport.”
He added, “Johnson trying to suggest actual, verified terrorists are just walking across the border. The TSDB he is referencing is loaded up with tons of people with tenuous connections at most. Every time it gets audited by OIG they find tons of errors.”
And Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council also debunked Johnson’s remarks.
“Johnson also says the number of migrants who’ve come under Biden might be as high as 14 million,” he said. “That is just completely made up, even if you include the 2 million so-called “got-aways” he then mentions (many who were the repeat crossers mentioned above).”
And he added: “Johnson also makes the classic error of confusing human smuggling with human trafficking when he cites an estimate of cartel profits. Most people paying the cartels WANT to come to the US. That’s human smuggling. Trafficking is when it’s involuntary.”
Former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, offered this assessment of Johnson remarks: “This is pure and unrefined gobbledygook…”
Watch Johnson and Tapper below or at this link.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border
JAKE TAPPER: There aren’t hundreds of known terrorists getting into the country pic.twitter.com/OupsyawGAX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 3, 2024
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