On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) stated that the border will be “overwhelmed” when Title 42 ends and that people will be released onto the streets “on the honor system, and the powerful image of people just coming in and not going back and being returned is just going to become a bigger magnet for more people coming in.”
Cuellar said, “Border Patrol right now, they’re at over 124% average over capacity, almost every border sector except for west Texas is over capacity and if the NGOs and the border communities cannot take care of those folks and they’re over capacity, they’re going to start doing street releases, and again, I’ve been told that they’ve been instructed to go to street releases if they have to. That image — it’s a powerful image — is not good, because that means more and more people are going to come in. The numbers I’ve seen, the estimates, there [are] over 150,000 people on the northern border states, the Mexican border states. If you include the ones who are in the pipelines, if you include the ones who are in Central America, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people that are heading to our border. And if we don’t put any consequences, which means deport people, then [these] numbers are going to keep increasing.”
He added, “I certainly hope that the secretary is successful, and I want to be helpful to him. But what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing, it’s — they’re going to get overwhelmed. Border Patrol is going to get overwhelmed. And, as you know, putting people out on the streets and putting them — I think they’re saying they’re going to be paroled, but still, in many ways, they’re going out on the honor system, and the powerful image of people just coming in and not going back and being returned is just going to become a bigger magnet for more people coming in.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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