Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
We have US Senator for Oklahoma, James Lankford on the phone, and
the Senator, it's been very busy. I know that you've been working hard
on a bill that would address our southern border. Can you tell us a
little bit about some of the things that seemed to be kind of misconstrued.
There seemed to be some misconceptions about the bill. Yeah, there are a
lot of misconceptions about the bill. Good morning, everybody on it. Yeah,
four months ago I started working across the ABACA. We couldn't figure out
a way to actually stop the border chaos, and we press Democrats to be
able to actually come to the table. Were successful at that, to get
to the table, then get the White House to the table. What we
came out with on the other end of it was a deal that would add
more border wall. The border wall would be designed according to Donald Trump's designs
and the Donald Trump locations. It would also include fifty thousand detention beds it
and double our numbered deportation flights at ice officers, border patrol officers, asylum
officers, change the way we do fentanyl screening at the border, adding non
intrusive equipment that would actually pick up finanyl, add sanctions to cartels that actually
traffic in fentanyl, which is a huge gap we have right now in our
law. It would add a change in the asylum law that would dramatically increase
the difficulty of coming across our border in claiming asylum, which right now to
claim asylum today, people are walking across the border right now saying I have
fear in my country and they get released for ten years. That's a law
issue that we've got to be able to change. So we increase the standard
for evidence, added new three new bars. In the process. We took
away a lot of the appeals so it doesn't take ten years. It takes
days, weeks or months at the latest before we can rapidly deport people.
We change the parole issue, which the Biden administration is releasing another fifteen hundred
people today with a worker at the border. We took that away. So
we're not giving out pre work permits at the border, which has been one
of those things has been misconstrued. People are saying we are giving about Actually
we're stopping work permits from giving out. And here's the big one. The
emergency authority that has been so misconstrued or quite frankly by some intentionally. So
the way the border is set up under this new authority and the law that
we're setting up is that if you cross the border, you're apprehended, you're
screened, and deported. So those three steps apprehended, screened, and deported,
and that happens from the very first person that comes across. But once
you get to five thousand, are systems getting overwhelmed. So at that point
we no longer screen you. We just apprehend and deport you because we don't
have time to do screenings anymore. So first five thousand, apprehend, screen,
deport. After that it's just apprehend to port immediately. It's been told
by so many folks that were allowing five thousand people a day to come in
and then stopping. It's actually entirely the opposite site. It's kind of like
the work permit issue. People are saying you're allowing work permits. We're actually
stopping work permits from being given away. So it's been a remarkable journey we
went through all that got the legislation together. I had two issues on trying
to be able to move it some folks who said even that's not enough.
Though that makes a radical change in where we are in border policy. They're
saying, hey, I want even more. And there are other folks that
said they believed all of these misconceptions of everything on it that were thrown out
there. There was just so much on the Internet and Twitter that he said,
Hey, I just don't want to take the political risk. At the
end of the day, the borders still opened today, just like it was
yesterday, and it will be the next day, in the next day until
we actually take action on this, and quite frankly, Joe Biden actually enforces
the law that he has. But there are problems in the law. Donald
Trump had problems in the law. Remember there were days when Donald Trump was
president we had four thousand, sometimes almost forty seven hundred people a day that
were illegally crossing the border. He was having the same struggles with the law
in twenty nineteen and was asking for changes in asylum. This bill would have
given those changes that Donald Trump was asking for in twenty nineteen. Is there
any chance that this could be retooled, rewarded, or represented that with some
of these things being to the forefront of being misconstrued, addressed like heavily and
perhaps taken back for another voter. Did we start a new day? You
know, I'm not sure they will pick it up at this point. That
what was funny was the leadership of the House of Representatives. Within minutes after
the text was announced, they said we're opposed to it. So literally,
there's no chances three hundred and seventy pages, there's no chance any of them
read it, but they just immediately announced we're opposed to it. We're not
going to do it. I think a lot of this did fall on presidential
politics, quite frankly, that people are just saying, hey, in a
presidential election year, I don't want to deal with an issue this big.
But the bigger issue is it's unresolved. So my push has been let's do
as much as we can. We may not get everything that we want in
this, and some folks, if I don't get everything else, I'll do
nothing. The problem with doing nothing is love. Another seven thousand people illegally
crossing the border again today. We have a chance to be able to stop
that or dramatically slow it because many of the things that we put into this
law would have required this administration not given them the option would have required this
administration to be very different and how they're actually mishandling the law right now.
So I'm going to keep pressing. I'm going to keep pushing on it because
I think this is a major issue that Americans want a solution to. People
want this to be different for rightly so with the chaos at our southern border.
I don't know where everybody else is going to go on that, but
I, for one, am going to keep working it. Senator, I
want to thank you very much for being able to take some time with us
today. I know that a lot of people have been wanting to get comments
from you, but thanks for addressing this very important issue with all of us
back home. Yeah, I'm glad to be able to do it. It
really has been very misconstrued. Obviously, everybody's angry about what's happening the border.
I am too. I actually I'm a whole landsecurity on the border management.
That's how I ended up with this short straw to actually negotiate with the
other side is because it is my committee assignment that I'm in leadership bought.
I've been to the border a dozen times. I continue to be able to
talk to leadership there the National Border Patrol Council. When we released this bill,
they took a look at it and came back and said, this would
be far better than the status quo, was their statement. So the folks
on the ground that need to help, they read the bill and said this
is a great solution for us. They even made the statement it's not perfect.
Quite frankly, they're still saying the same thing I am. There are
more things that I'd like to have. But their statement was also, it'd
be far better than the status quo. I'm trying to move a Democrat president
in a Democrat Senate where Republicans are in the minority right now, to be
able to move them as far as I can move them, get as much
done at the border as I can, and then go fight for the next
part. How can folks get a hold of you as if they have a
question of comment about anything related to Oklahoma as it pertains to the United States
government. Absolutely, they're welcome to be able to reach out anytime. They
can go to my website Langford dot Senate dot gov. Langford dot Senate dot
gov. If you go there, it'll have our phone numbers for all of
our offices in Oklahoma and in Washington, DC as email addresses. There you
can contact us. They can sign up for our e newsletter. We put
out that newsletter once a month just to detail the things that we've worked on
recently, to give the background on all of those things. So you can
go to social media at Senator Langford involve us there. I would just advise
you not to believe everything you read on social media because just because it's post
on social media doesn't mean it's true.