Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told Newsmax Thursday that President Joe Biden "doesn't want to see the problem" at the U.S.-Mexico border and instead prefers to blame Republicans for the ongoing border crisis.
"Under the Trump policies, we saw rapidly declining numbers, down into 20,000 [border crossers] per month," Hern said during an appearance on Newsmax's "National Report." "What we saw in December was a record high of 251,000 that crossed [and] fentanyl that's killing … some 100,000 deaths per year since this president's been in office.
"It's typical of him," he continued. "He doesn't want to go see the problem so therefore he blames us for wanting to understand the problem. This president needs to get out of the White House and start doing his job."
The Oklahoma Republican said he's visited the southern border several times and "it's a disaster what's happened."
"We thought it was really bad in 2019, and we saw declining numbers then, but, since 2021, we've seen almost 5 million people cross the southern border, that we know about, [and] another 700,000 that are got-aways, which is about 50% more than the population of my entire state of Oklahoma. And that's just in 24 months.
"We need to come together and solve this, but what we don't need to be doing is seeing a White House undo the policies that were working at the southern border and making sure that we don't have members of the Democrat Party wanting to defund the deterrence that we have."
Hern said he called for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign last year "because he wasn't doing his job."
"We have to start somewhere. Somebody has to be held accountable for the change in the direction of the border security and that was the Biden administration just 24 months ago."
The Sooner State congressman said that Oklahoma is located "on the I-35 corridor, which is the direct south to north beltway to get fentanyl across the United States of America."
He added: "This is something that's really tragic, that this president won't acknowledge that what's going on is simply not working. Oklahomans are concerned about the fentanyl overdoses. I've talked to the sheriff's department, the highway patrol, the city police — it's incredible what's going on across this country."
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