"No one's paying attention" to the nation's northern border with Canada, and that has led to a massive surge of immigrants entering the United States, Rep. Claudia Tenney said on Newsmax Sunday, two days after her visit with Border Patrol agents there.
"[We've seen] an over 846% surge since last year of illegal crossings, and this includes a lot of different types of drugs, exotic drugs like ecstasy, fentanyl, other illicit drugs, human trafficking, and human smuggling," the New York Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "This is happening and it's continuing to go on because no one's paying attention."
Another part of the problem is that many of the northern border agents have been diverted to deal with the crisis at the southern border, said Tenney.
The congresswoman's visit with Border Patrol agents from the Buffalo Sector and the Swanton Sector, which is in her district, came after they asked her office to visit. She said she's learned how the cartels have "outsmarted" President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, "who is nothing more than an accomplice for Joe Biden's bad policies."
The migrant surges at the northern border are also happening because the United States has a "lot of laws in place that we don't enforce," said Tenney.
She noted that the Border Patrol agents told her that those laws are interpreted differently by different presidential administrations.
Further, there is no visa requirement for people from Mexico to fly into Canada, so the cartels are flying the immigrants and drugs in through commercial airlines, said Tenney.
"They have ways of sneaking them in and getting them across the border," she said. "They land in Canada, pick up an Uber, and Uber takes them to the border and the cartels get them across the line," said Tenney.
True asylum seekers make up the smallest margin of immigrants, said Tenney, while others come for economic reasons, but then there are the "really bad guys" who are "coming here to exploit and make money off of our open borders, selling drugs, selling people."
New York laws that include giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses are also causing issues, said Tenney.
"You cannot determine who they are when you go to make a vehicle stop," she said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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