U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Talks Border Crisis at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. Campus
Mark Morgan discusses the dangers of what is happening at the country’s southwest border
Hillsdale, Mich. — Hillsdale College in D.C. invited guests to an AWC Family Foundation Lecture and reception on July 22, titled “The Crisis at our Southern Border.” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, focused on the severity of what is happening at the southwest border and why it is a danger to the country’s sovereignty, security, and future.
“The rhetoric of border security, an issue that used to have bipartisan support, has shifted, and Mark Morgan remains at the forefront of the issue,” said Matthew Spalding, vice president for Washington Operations. “Morgan looks to facts for guidance in a situation that has become more politically and ideologically driven than ever.”
Morgan argued the Biden administration has created the border crisis for political gain by its purposeful unraveling of many of the policies put into place by the Trump administration. This unraveling is marked by hypocrisy, he said, as prominent Democrats, including Joe Biden, supported the building of 650 miles of a wall at the southern border between 2006 and 2011.
According to Morgan, what was the most secure border in the country’s history is suddenly a humanitarian crisis.
“We have seen four straight months of 170,000 illegal aliens per month,” he noted. “This June, we saw almost 190,000 apprehensions. That is the third-highest monthly total in over 21 years.”
Morgan explained the manpower and resources needed to apprehend, process, and provide appropriate humanity assistance cannot match these numbers. For this and other reasons, 270,000 illegal aliens entered the country in the last fiscal year. And though not all of these people have criminal intent, many of them do.
“This year alone, border patrol has apprehended over 8,000 criminal aliens. These are gang members, rapists, pedophiles,” said Morgan. “When the Biden administration opened the borders and turned human smuggling back on, they turned a multi-billion-dollar business back on for the cartels. And they’re going to take that money to improve their capacity to build tunnels, to use drones, ultralights, maritime operations, it goes on. And that’s just in between the ports of entry.”
Morgan recalled a recent statement by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that 90 percent of the methamphetamine that comes into Florida comes from the southwest border, reminding Americans that every town is a border town, city, or state.
“What happens on the southwest border doesn’t stay there,” said Morgan. “It makes its way to every neighborhood in this country.”
Still, Americans are led to believe they face a binary choice: Either they should want to help poor immigrants with a better life or they’re labeled uncompassionate, uncaring racists. Rational discussion has diminished.
“Ronald Reagan couldn’t have been more correct when he said that a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation,” said Morgan. “We can’t be swayed by those who are driven by ideological hubris and the quest for perpetual political power.”
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About Hillsdale College
About Mark Morgan
Mark Morgan earned a B.S. in engineering from Central Missouri State University and a J.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He served as chief of U.S. Border Patrol in the Obama administration and as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is a former active-duty member and reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served for over 20 years in the FBI in a variety of positions, including as the assistant section chief of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime Branch; as deputy on-scene commander in Baghdad, Iraq, where he was responsible for all FBI personnel deployed in the Counterterrorism Division; as special agent in charge of the El Paso Division; and as assistant director in charge of the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA.