John Cornyn Asked: 'Are You Comfortable With How Aggressive The Administration's Been On Deportation?'

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) discusses the Trump Administration's hardline immigration crackdown.

Transcript

00:00I'm optimistic.

00:01With the drop in the flow of migrants coming across the border,

00:04do we see the fentanyl flow also drying up, or what's the current situation?

00:09I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are now,

00:12but some of this comes smuggled across the ports of entry,

00:17and the part that I'm confident has dried up is the so-called gotaways,

00:22the million-and-a-half-plus people who came across the border

00:25and simply evaded law enforcement.

00:27I know there's a narrative that all the hard drugs come across the ports of entry.

00:34Certainly many of them do, but I think it's just a fantasy to think

00:39that the people who were evading law enforcement during the Biden administration's so-called gotaways

00:45weren't also involved in illegal activity like running drugs in the United States.

00:51So obviously we need to deal with all of those.

00:53Senator, are you comfortable with how aggressive the administration's been on deportation?

00:59Specifically, we've seen situations where young children have been sent to countries

01:04after their mothers were deported.

01:05Is that the kind of thing you're hearing back home is the kind of tactics that they should be employing here?

01:11Well, I think there's a lot of my constituents who are delighted that President Trump

01:16has finally gotten serious about enforcing the law and removing people who should not be in the United States

01:22because they came illegally to their countries of origin.

01:26I think that's the primary reaction I'm hearing.

01:29And as far as the children who have gone back presumably with their parents

01:34who were illegally in the United States on a voluntary basis,

01:38I think to me that's understandable that mothers, the parents would want to take those children back with them.

01:48And then there's about a half a million unaccompanied minors

01:52who I understand are being reunited with their families and being removed from the United States.

01:58So this has gotten to be sort of of epic proportions,

02:02the number of people in the country who came in during the last four years.

02:05And I think this is a necessary part of restoring the rule of law

02:10and security to our border and logic to our immigration system.

02:16There's legal channels for people to come into the United States,

02:19and we naturalize about a million people a year.

02:22That's the right way to do it.