Fox News' Maria Bartiromo conducted a special episode of "Sunday Morning Features" at the United States-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. During her interview, Bartiromo spoke with Border Patrol officers to talk about the crisis taking place on America's southern border. While speaking with a few of the agents about the dried up Rio Grande River, multiple illegal aliens crossed the ravine and stepped right into the United States.
According to the Border Patrol agent, those crossing the border like this look for an agent and willingly turn themselves in. The reason? They're giving a piece of paper and are sent northbound further into the United States.
"I mean, the river's dry right now so it's easy to get through," Bartiromo told the agent.
"Correct," he responded
"Mexico is right over there," she said, pointing across the ravine.
"Yes, ma'am," he responded
"And then, of course, they run up–" he said as Bartiromo looked around.
"Who is this running right here?" Bartiromo asked, pointing to people crossing the border.
"This a family group that's just crossed," the agent replied.
"A family group is just crossing while we're right here?" she asked in amazement.
"Yes," the agent replied.
The Border Patrol agents have them sit on the ground, at which point Bartiromo asked them what their plans were.
"What were your plans? Where were you going to go?" she asked the pair.
The illegal aliens were planning to go to Oklahoma City. The Hondurans were told back in their home country that if they got to the United States and successfully crossed that they would be allowed to stay.
Not long after that interaction, another group of people walked across the border.
"They basically walk until they see an agent and then they turn themselves in," the agent explained to Bartiromo.
"So they want to see you right now?" she asked.
"Definitely," he said.
"They want to get apprehended, they want to get processed," she said.
"They want to get processed, given the papers, then they go north and they have legal papers to be wherever they're going to be at," he explained.
Bartiromo shared a picture of those who were apprehended that morning. And, not surprisingly, many of them claimed to be "family units."
These people crossed the border this morning & were apprehended. Lots of kids, lots of "families" 114 people here then another two groups right behind them ?@SundayFutures? ?@FoxNews? 10am this am pic.twitter.com/nfLh5GkZBw
— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) April 28, 2019
Bartiromo also spoke to President Donald Trump about the issue.
"Well we’re on the border here and while we were standing here, Mr. President, we saw at least three groups -- different groups that crossed the border illegally and were apprehended, why are these numbers soaring so much today?" Bartiromo asked.
Trump's response is exactly the point Republicans have hammered on for months.
Well people are pouring up because our economy is so good. I mean, unfortunately, it’s the only bad part about what we’re doing because everybody wants a piece of it and they’re willing to come up and take the risk and this tremendous danger and our laws are so bad, the combination of having a great economy and having the weakest immigration laws anywhere in the world by far, and we have catch and release and we have chain migration and a visa lottery. We have things nobody in their right mind would have.
We’re trying to get rid of them, the Democrats won’t do it. We need some Democrat votes. We’re unanimous with the Republicans but we need some Democrat votes and they go out of their way to allow these people to come in. And when you get cute, when you get tough, when you do all of these things that we have to do, they end up arresting border patrol people. It’s a disgrace to our country what’s going on. The worst immigration laws ever. Incompetent. They’re there for a long time. When -- when they used to separate children, which was done during the Obama administration, with Bush, with us, with everybody, far fewer people would come and we’ve been on a humane basis, was pretty bad.
We -- we go out and we stop the separation. The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families. It’s like Disneyland now. You know, before you’d get separated so people would say let’s not go up. Now you don’t get separated and, you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have -- literally you have 10 times more families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children, so it turned out to be a -- just incentive that is obviously a disaster. It’s a disaster. You have people coming up with many children and now we know -- we know where everybody is and we’re moving people out so fast. The problem is we have to register them, we have to bring them to court. Another country just says sorry, you can’t come into our country and they walk them out. In our country you have to bring them to court, you have to have Perry Mason involved, I mean, you know, it’s all legal. You have lawyers standing at the border, our people, lawyers, wise guys standing at the border, signing people up. Every time they catch a cold they try and blame Border Patrol. It’s a disgrace what’s going on and it -- it could be solved in -- in 15 minutes if the Democrats would give us the votes, it would be over.
According to Trump, there will 400 miles of border walls at the end of the year.
He also explained why the immigration courts are a complete failure and why Democrats "need to get off their asses."
We don’t need a court system, we have a court system that is – has 900,000 cases behind it. In other words, they have a court which needs to hear 900,000 cases, how ridiculous is this? This has been building up from years, from many years.
And it’s just – it’s just a system that Congress can fix, Maria, and they don’t get off their ass. And it’s the Democrats that could solve it so quickly because we’re going to have all the infrastructure soon, I’ll have the wall up, I mean by the end of the next year most of the wall is going to be up.
Where you are where the wall ends, that’s part of the wall that we’re building, in other words where the wall ends that’s the weak spot, it’s like water. They come through the weak spots.
What Bartiromo saw first hand is what Republicans have been saying for years. It's what those of us from the southwest have known to be true for years. Democrats are quick to say we don't have a crisis on our southern border but if this doesn't make them stop and think twice about just how easy it is to get into the United States, nothing will.
Here's the full episode of Bartiromo's exclusive border experience: