Monday on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson questioned why the federal government was not transparent with the numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States and why government authorities stonewall when asked.

Carlson argued the public had a right to know more about the border crisis, despite the aspersions cast on those who inquire.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: We want to bring you up to date on maybe the defining story of this moment that hasn’t gotten enough attention and that’s the crisis on the border, the one in progress now, the one that will change this country for your grandchildren profoundly.

In the fall of 2018, not long before that year’s midterm elections, Donald Trump ordered a small group of active-duty soldiers to the American border with Mexico. Congress had refused to build his long promise wall and Trump wanted to highlight the severity of the illegal immigration crisis, which has been going on for decades.

In some ways, sending the troops was a symbolic gesture, only about 5,000 participated. For perspective on how many that is, that is far fewer, about half the number of troops that the Democratic Congress sent to Washington this winter to protect itself from an imaginary QAnon threat.

But for those with a vested interest in open borders — virtually everyone in D.C. — any military presence on our border was just too much, it was intolerable.

Official Washington went berserk when he did it. “Deploying troops to our own border for no national security reason is one of the biggest scandals of his presidency,” declared a senator from Hawaii called Brian Schatz with what looked like carefully simulated outrage.

Congressman Filemon Vela of Texas who was then the head Democrat on the Subcommittee in charge of border security described Trump’s tiny trip deployment as a political ploy designed to quote, “appease his white nationalist supporters.” It was racist. Of course, it was.

The so-called national security community claimed to be every bit as upset as their partners in the Democratic Party. “It’s a craven misuse of the U.S. Armed Forces for an obvious political stunt,” said the former National Security Council staffer called Kelly Magsamen, and that turned out to be the right thing to say for ambitious young players in D.C.

Less than three years later, Kelly Magsamen is now chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, that would be the political activist and defense contractor, Lloyd Austin.

Hot-headed Congressman Filemon Vela, meanwhile, the one who charged racism has now ascended to Vice Chairmanship of the DNC.

So in Washington, there is always a real payoff for those willing to repeat the necessary slogans. And then the border: how is the border doing these days? Remember the border?

Well, the military, our military is still involved in the immigration crisis, but not in the ways that you might expect. American troops are now occupied serving the needs, not of Americans, but of foreign nationals who have flagrantly violated our laws.

The Biden administration is turning our military bases into housing for illegal aliens. If that sounds like a partisan attack, something we just made up, watch the President’s own flack brag about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Just in this past week, we’ve taken steps to bring a number of new facilities online from Fort Bliss, where there are 5,000 beds, to Lackland Air Force Base where there are 350 beds, San Diego Convention Center 1,400 beds. These three sites alone provide peak capacity and additional 6,750 beds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So you break into our country, and in return, we give you free housing and medical care. Pretty generous. What’s interesting is to note who’s not getting that treatment.

Last night, more than half a million Americans spent the night in makeshift shelters or on the streets, they’re homeless. But the Biden administration isn’t even considering the use of the U.S. military to help them despite the fact that many are veterans. Instead, the administration is boasting about all they’re doing for the people who have demonstrated pure contempt for our system, the system that some of us prefer and would like to preserve.

The press conference we just played a clip from was 10 days ago. No one in the media it seems to have bothered to follow up on that.

Fort Bliss for example, headquartered in El Paso, Texas, one of the largest army bases on the planet. How many illegal aliens are now living at Fort Bliss? How many are there right now? And the truth is we don’t know.

We asked authorities at Fort Bliss, point-blank that question today, but they refused to tell us. Instead, they referred us to their bosses in the Biden administration, to the political commissar.

America has no right to know how many illegal aliens are living on our military bases. And neither, by the way, do elected Members of Congress who are charged with overseeing all of this, but they can’t know. Watch what happened when one of them tried to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please give dignity to the people. Please give dignity to the people.

VOICE OF SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): So you work for the Commissioner. You’re a senior adviser. You were hired two weeks ago, and you’re instructed to ask us to not have any pictures taken here?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please respect the people — the rules.

CRUZ: Because the political leadership at DHS. Does not want the American people to know it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please don’t treat the people — as such.

CRUZ: You’re right and this is a dangerous place.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please don’t treat the people like this. That’s all I ask.

CRUZ: And your policy is, unfortunately, are trying to hide them. I understand. You were instructed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That’s all I ask you.

CRUZ: When 18 senators came down here —

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I ask you to please respect the people. Give then dignity and respect.

CRUZ: I respect them and I want to fix this situation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are one of the system. We don’t want this to happen anymore.

CRUZ: And the administration you’re working for is responsible for these conditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: “Please give dignity to the people,” squeaks the Women’s Studies major from Wesleyan who is now overseeing all of this somehow. “Please respect the people,” she says, meaning of course, the foreign nationals whose interest the Biden administration is now serving.

Notice the total lack of respect for the American people, the ones who deserve precise answers, who deserve to see what’s happening, but don’t get it. They can shut up and pay for it.

Officials at HHS, which we referred by Fort Bliss gave us no numbers today when we asked how many people are living at Fort Bliss? They did assure us however that quote, “Military personnel will not be staffing this site or providing care for the children,” end quote.

That is a lie. Flat out, it is not true. It is a lie. It’s a crock.

We spoke to a person with direct knowledge of this subject this morning, a relative to someone who just deployed to Fort Bliss to take care of the illegal aliens there.

As of today, the military has constructed at least six enormous tents at Fort Bliss, each of which will house approximately 1,000 illegal aliens, more tents are coming.

But because it really is Orwell at this point, military personnel have been instructed. And when you’re instructed in the military, you must obey. It’s a crime not to. They’ve been told they are not allowed to take photographs of these tents. Those tents are now national security secrets like missile silos.

Why are they hiding this? So they can lie to the rest of us. Some details have leaked out about what’s happening at the border. Here’s one: the Border Patrol announced today, they have detained at least two people so far, whose names were on the Federal terror watch list. Both men came from Yemen, you see their pictures on the screen, both just crossed from Mexico into California.

So it’s not just willing workers, it is not just fruit pickers who are taking advantage of the total chaos that Joe Biden has unleashed along our border. Of course, our mortal enemies are taking advantage of it, too. And that raises the question: how many potential terrorists have crossed the border in the last three months and not been caught? That’s a fair question.

How many gang members have? How many rapists and murderers? You can say that you’re not allowed to ask that question, but of course, you are.

If you live in this country, you should be asking that question. It’s not racist to wonder, it’s real.

How many pounds of fentanyl have crossed over? How many more Americans will die from that drug? The truth is, we don’t know the answers to any of these questions.

We do know that Washington lies about numbers constantly. You see it everywhere. They tell us inflation isn’t real. It’s not happening. Look around. Yes, it is happening. It’s entirely real.

They tell us there are 11 million foreign nationals living in the United States when we know for a fact that the real number is closer to three times that, yet they keep lying, 11 million.

Sources familiar with Internal Customs and Border Protection data have confirmed to Fox News that officers so far have encountered 171,000 illegal immigrants in the month of March alone, in one month. That’s a 418 percent increase from March of last year. But that does not represent the total of people who crossed over. Those are the ones who were caught. Those are just the ones that we know about.

The real number is higher, much higher. How high is it? It’s high enough to change this country forever in every conceivable way. It’s high enough to devalue your political power as a voter. It’s high enough to subvert democracy itself. It’s high enough to make this country a different place.

But again, we don’t know the number. Why is that? We have absolutely the right to know. We should demand to know now.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor