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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast more what you hear weekday

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afternoons on the Drive. Senator James
Lankort is joining me. Now, he

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has been in this border battle since
the beginning and it just keeps getting worse

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and worse. Senator, Now,
there is word that negotiations have begun,

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but let's start with what exactly you
are trying to negotiate. We're trying to

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negotiate control at the border and to
stop to be able to chaos. If

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I can put it in a simple
way, we've seen now ten thousand people

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a day a crossing the border.
We're approaching three hundred thousand people a month,

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to give you just a perspective how
crazy it's become. The last two

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months, we've had more people across
illegally than there were in any single year

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during the Obama administration. So it
is absolutely spiraling out of control. So

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we're trying to be able to get
this back into control. That's changing how

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we do asylum. That's doing more
people being detained, actually going through the

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screenings and mandating that. It's allowing
some ability to say we can handle any

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more. Capacity wise, we've got
to be able to turn people around.

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It's whatever it takes to be able
to regain control of our own border.

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So the United States runs our border, not criminal cartels from Mexico. Well,

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then what is the administration negotiating?
I mean, you would think that

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they would at least want some sort
some sorts of border security. Yeah.

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I don't get it either. On
it. The only thing I can possibly

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think of is they want to flood
so many people across the border that at

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some point Republicans will say, we'll
trade you border security for amnesty for everybody

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here, which is just not rational. We've been very focused on the border

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security. It's not that Republicans or
Conservatives are opposed immigration. We just want

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legal immigration, not illegal immigration.
That shouldn't be hard. Let's do legal

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immigration. But anything that begins with
the word I go. Why would we

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not be opposed to that. Let's
get an orderly process, it's not chaotic.

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Well, even under the former administration, the Obama administration, the process

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was a lot more orderly than this. Oh yeah, it definitely was.

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It was moretally than this. But
you remember, during the first term of

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the Obama administration, we really didn't
see the chaos of the border. It

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started rising in the second term.
What happened in the second term is a

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lot of these cartels started experimenting with
if we flood a lot of people over

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the border at one time and all
asked for asylum, what would happen.

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And what they found is they can
break the system. So prior to really

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the first the second term of the
Obama administration, most of the people that

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came across the border were single adult
males coming from Mexico that were coming in

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to try to be able to work. That was largely what was happening,

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and we started seeing more people from
Honduras, Guatemala, l Salvador coming,

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also mostly single adult males. But
during the second term, we started seeing

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the cartels actually bringing a lot of
people with families and would ask for asylum.

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When they ask for asylum, there
weren't enough asylum judges, there weren't

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enough enough asylum officers, there wasn't
enough bedspace to be able to actually do

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it, and so they started getting
released into the country to say Okay,

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we'll do your hearing later. Well, once the later happened, then we

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started going from five hundred to one
thousand to five thousand suddenly coming across the

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border, all asking for asylum,
and the hearing's got layer and layer later.

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Now we have two million people that
are in the backlog of waiting an

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asylum hearing. These folks don't qualify
for asylum. Everyone knows it. Everyone

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knows their game in the system and
trying to break it just to be able

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to get across the border and to
be able to get in. Many of

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these individuals, the administration is giving
a work permit to them, which incentivizes

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even more people to be able to
come. So we've got to address this

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issue of what is asylum, what
is not asylum, Who gets a work

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permit and who does not, and
how do we get back to an orderly

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process in this You shouldn't get a
work permit simply for walking across the border,

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demanding something that everyone knows you don't
actually qualify for. Senator James Langfort

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is with us. So we're talking
about the chaos at the border. So

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what are the Democrats willing to negotiate, Well, they're talking about all of

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it now because we've demanded it.
The focus has been on national security.

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If we're going to do funding for
Israel, and for Ukraine and for Taiwan,

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which are key international national security issues. We're not going to talk about

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those things until we're talking about our
own national security. And so I have

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pressed very hard to say I'm not
negotiating any of those other things until we

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actually secure our border. That's been
two months in the process to get to

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that. Just in the last week
the White House has joined in to be

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able to say, Okay, we're
here, We'll admit there's a national security

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problem. It's actually worked to be
able to resolve it. So we're making

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some productive steps at this point to
try to figure out how do we actually

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get us back into something that's a
manageable process at our border, and how

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do we actually secure that. Well, then the conversation begins how long that

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will take? I keep here,
colleagues say at least in too next year.

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Oh yeah, there's no texts that
we're looking at. We've had folks

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they are you're going to vote later
this week, and I've just laughed and

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said, I vote on what there's
no agreed upon text. You actual act

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have text in front of you to
actually vote on something. Says no way

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to do that. Also, immigration
law is incredibly technical, so it's not

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something that you can just right overnight. It takes a long time to be

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able to pull the details of that
together. So we're still negotiating through a

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lot of the big issues. Once
we get resolution on the big issues,

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then we've got to be able to
get text that we can all agree on

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and say that actually works and lines
up of what we're trying to do,

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and then to be able to inform
everybody of what's actually in it. And

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in the meantime, Senator laying for
the border just stays open. The last

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three days, we've had more than
ten thousand people a day that have illegally

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across our border. That is somewhere
between six to eight thousand people a day

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that are just being released in the
country, basically unscreened, that they're just

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told go show up at some future
hearing date and we'll screen you at that

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point when you qualify for asylum.
But it's just thousands every day, and

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they're not just from the Western Hemisphere. We're getting now thousands and thousands of

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people from Africa, from the Middle
East, from Pakistan, from Russia,

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from China. We're having tens of
thousands of people this administration is calling national

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security risk. The official designation is
special interest migrants, with tens of thousands

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of those that have crossed in the
past year that the administration has said there's

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just no room to hold them,
and so they're being released into the country.

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That has got to stop. And
so my focus now is how do

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we get to an agreement, how
do we make this stop so that we

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can stop having this kind of national
security crisis on our border. Day of

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to day, Senator James Langford with
US in Washington, we're talking about the

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chaos at the border. What are
some of the solutions, some of the

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proposals, some of the ideas well. First things first, you got to

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actually if somebody's going to request asylum, they've got to actually do that request

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at the border. They've got to
get a hearing at the border, and

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that's got to be rapid. And
when a decision is made they don't qualify

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for asylum, they've got to get
turned around and head right back to their

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home country again. As soon as
you do that, people stop coming.

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Because right now people are coming paying
a cartel knowing that if I pay the

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cartel, I'm going to get in
As soon as you find out I pay

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the cartel, I don't get in, people will stop paying cartels in coming

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to be able to do that again. Asylum is really a high bar.

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People think asylum you can just come
in and say I'm afraid and that gets

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you asylum. That's actually not true. You've got to show there is no

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safe place in my home country that
I could go. That's a safe place

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for me to be. Literally,
the federal government in that country is after

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me, and there's nowhere else I
could go to receive a protection other than

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here. Well, it's a pretty
high bar. Very few people actually qualify

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for that. But the problem is
the hearing for that is not for years,

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and so people are willing to take
the risk. If you put that

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hearing right at the border as soon
as you cross and determine you actually don't

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qualify, then fly them back to
their home country. The message we'll get

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out and hurry Well, Senator James
Langford, I know this is a stretch,

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but it seems to me that if
we don't do something soon, we're

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going to be faced with a situation
not unlike Israel and Gaza. Yeah,

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I would tell you that just on
October the seventh. I had a lot

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of people that were just overwhelmingly grieved
by that terrorist attack in Israel for good

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reason. It is absolutely terrible,
but also had a lot of folks that

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said, we have a porous border, what are we doing about that?

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So you're not the first to be
able to attach the two on that to

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say there is a real threat there. We forget sometimes that the nine to

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eleven terrasts were people that were not
legally present in the country. They didn't

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come across our southern border, but
they had oversetateed a visa and they were

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currently not legally present. We have
also picked up over two hundred people in

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the past few months that are on
our terror watch lists that came across our

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southern border that we were able to
interdict. So this is not some conspiracy

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out there that there could be folks
coming after us. There are because we've

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arrested some of them and picked them
up as they're coming across the border of

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folks that have terror connections, and
we know full well that Hesbalah and Hamas

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is continuing to be able to activate
people, and with a very poorest border,

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it's an easy route to be able
to get in Senator James Langford.

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This isn't a very pleasant topic or
of a pleasant conversation, but I do

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wish you and your family a very
pleasant Christmas. Well, Merry Christmas.

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Everybody working, continue work. There's
a lot that's got to get done on

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this and my focus is best thing
we can do for Christmas for the nation

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is a secure nations border in the
start of the new year, so let's

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get it done. Thanks for listening
to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee

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Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen
to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five

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to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation