James Lankford, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, who has been attacked by members of his party, including Donald Trump (the likely Republican nominee for president in 2024), for his defense of the Senate’s bipartisan border “security package”, said on Sunday that his GOP colleagues are wrong.
Lankford says the problem is “internet rumors,” and “election-year politics”.
Lankford also said that he didn’t believe the bill was nearly complete. It wasn’t to allow 5,000 illegal immigrants into the country every day.
The embattled Senator spent more time on “Fox News Sunday” explaining what the bill wasn’t than what it was. Lankford, for example, told Shannon Bream that:
Sen. Cruz and other people are still waiting to read the bill. This has been a great challenge, being able to fight through the last words to be able to get the bill text to the people.
Now, people are running around on internet rumors. It would be absurd to accept 5,000 people per day.
What an oddity. How could a “rumor on the internet” — one that was very specific — be picked up by Ted Cruz and Republicans who are staunchly opposed to the Senate Bill?
Lankford’s claim that 5,000 illegal entries are added to the database every day is confusing. I understand social media users latching on to such rumors.
He went further and told Bream:
This bill is aimed at reducing illegal crossings to zero per day. There is no amnesty.
I get the “There’s no amnesty” part —yet, that is, but Lankford’s flat-out denial of the 5K illegals? Sketchy.
The more the Oklahoma Senator talked, the more confused his rhetoric became.
The bill increases Border Patrol agents and asylum officers. The bill increases the number of detention beds to allow us to quickly detain, and then deport, individuals. The catch-and-release system is eliminated. The focus is on deportation flights.
This changes our asylum procedure so that people get a faster asylum screening with a higher level of standard, and are then sent back to their country. It’s not about allowing 5,000 people to enter a country a day. This is the section that has been misunderstood most. Let me explain briefly what this is.
We’ve only had fewer than 5,000 people on seven of the last four days. It’s set up so that if there is a rush at the border and the border closes, nobody gets through.
This isn’t — this isn’t someone standing at a border with a clicker, saying, “I’m going let one more in. We’re at 4,999 and then it must stop.” This is a border shutdown and everyone gets turned around.
“How do we intervene and change the direction of this administration?”
Just one question:
How can it be that there are two opposite accounts of the Senate bill? While presumably well-informed Republican senators have slammed it, Speaker Mike Johnson has said it will never pass in the House. James Lankford is one of its architects and has told a different story.
Senator, who’s playing politics?
