Napolitano Blasted As 'Laughingstock' for Safe Border Claims

Agents patrolling America’s southern border are slamming Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano for giving the nation “a false sense of security,” after she claimed the border region is “better now than it ever has been.”

Janet Napolitano

In the past three years, three border patrol officers have been killed in the volatile border area.

Yet despite the grim reality of the rampant violence stemming from Mexican drug gangs — and two deployments of the National Guard — Napolitano recently remarked: “There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been. That is wrong.”

Napolitano pointed to statistics indicating fewer illegals are flooding across the border. But opponents of illegal immigration say the diminished activity simply reflects the high unemployment north of the border amidst a weak economy.

The National Border Patrol Council rejected Napolitano’s contention that peace has broken out on border with Mexico.

In a sign that the administration may be at odds with its patrol agents over efforts to secure the border, a statement posted on the council’s website commented: “If the border was better now than it has ever been, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry would not have been brutally murdered by heavily armed Mexican criminals operations over 13 miles inside the United States. In some countries,” it added, “that is construed as an act of war.”

Terry was gunned downed in December near the border town of Rio Rico, Ariz.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies, tells Newsmax that Napolitano’s statements are “political spin.”

The whole immigration-border issue is a sensitive one for this administration because no one believes they’re interested in border security — and with good reason,” Krikorian says. “And so they’ve had to go through all sorts of contortions to show they’re really not open border supporters. This is just part of that marketing campaign.”

But Krikorian tells Newsmax that as a former border governor herself in Arizona, Napolitano’s defense of the administration’s policies is becoming “something of a laughingstock.”

“Every time she says this people belief her even less,” Krikorian tells Newsmax. “She’s like Baghdad Bob during the evasion of Iraq, saying there are no American tanks in Bagdad even as they’re driving by right behind her. It’s becoming something of a joke.”

John Cornyn

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, in a speech to the U.S.-Mexico Congressional Border Issues Conference earlier this month, said that despite $4 billion spent on making the border safe “there does not appear to be a plan in place that actually accomplishes the objectives of a secure border.”