Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor, could not come up with a clear answer during Monday's White House press briefing on how rigorous the vetting process is for people who illegally cross the southern border as the crisis continues.
"How many people crossing the border that the U.S. government has no idea, like estimates of how many people are crossing, aren't giving their names, aren't giving IDs, aren't able to verify who they are?" a reporter asked.
"So we do have estimates of how many encounters there are on the border on a daily basis, we have processes and procedures in place to identify those individuals, to process them in an orderly fashion and then to do what is appropriate based on that processing," Sullivan said. "We have believed that that system is a system that does an effective job of being able to determine who is coming across the border and what the right way to deal with their case is."
"How many people are crossing [the border] who you have no idea who they are?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 12, 2022
SULLIVAN: "We have believed that that system is a system that does an effective job of being able to determine who is coming across the border and what the right way to deal with their case is." pic.twitter.com/p4H3z3K4g5
Due to Border Patrol agents being consistently overwhelmed at the southern border, the processing times have become shorter when releasing people who turned themselves in to law enforcement, causing concern among officials on how deep of a background check is conducted. The problem is compounded when top Department of Homeland Security officials visit processing centers as agents are ordered to empty out the center to make the problem seem not as bad as it really is.
.@SecMayorkas is set to visit the El Paso sector tomorrow. Agents say whenever a “higher up” comes to visit, they “clean house” so it looks like everything is under control.
— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) December 12, 2022