Thune to Stuart Varney: Border Security Requires Parole Reform

Press Release

"We have to close the southern border, and this president has shown no interest in it. And the reason parole's important is because if you get into the United States today illegally, you have a 95 percent chance of being released into the interior.

Ninety-five percent of the people who come across the border illegally are being released into the United States. This year, that'll be 1.2 million people.

The way they do that is by the abuse, and frankly, unlawful use of parole authority. So we have got to shut down parole. You can't shut down the southern border and reduce the incentives for people to come here illegally unless you deal with this issue of parole, and so that's got to be a part of any border security bill.

You've got to defend our southern border, it's a national security crisis there as well, and I think you can do all that. I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to come together behind something that actually is real, that has serious border reforms in it, and that gets operational control of that southern border at a time when America is facing national security risks not only all over the world, but right here in our backyard.

We've got to fix that, Stuart, and parole is part of it. There are other elements of it: asylum, expedited removal, those are all things that need to be addressed in this package.

The one thing that tempts our adversaries, it's not our strength -- it's our weakness.

And what this administration has projected from the time that it withdrew from Afghanistan, to what's happening in Ukraine, to what's happening in the Middle East right now. Those are all areas of the world where people are testing and tempting our strength and seeing if this president will actually stand up and do his job. And I think right now, what they're finding is that isn't the case, which is why they continue to push further and further."

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