Tucker: Americans deserve to know the real number of migrants here
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host analyzes steps government is taking to hide critical info about border crisis
In the fall of 2018, not long before that year's midterm elections, President Donald Trump ordered a small group of active-duty soldiers to the American border with Mexico. Congress had refused to build his long-promised wall, and Trump wanted to highlight the severity of the illegal immigration crisis, which had been going on for decades.
In some ways, sending the troops was a symbolic gesture. Only about 5,000 participated. For perspective, that is about half the number of troops that the Democratic Congress sent to Washington this winter to protect itself from an imaginary QAnon threat. For those with a vested interest in open borders, which is to say virtually everyone in D.C., any military presence on our border was just too much. It was intolerable. Official Washington went berserk when Trump did it.
"Deploying troops to our own border for no national security reason is one of the biggest scandals of his presidency," declared Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, with what looked like carefully simulated outrage. Rep. Filemon Vela Jr., D-Texas, then the top Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of border security, described Trump's tiny troop deployment as a political ploy designed to "appease his [W]hite nationalist supporters."
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 a former National Security Council staffer called Kelly Magsamen. That turned out to be the right thing to say for ambitious young players in D.C. Fewer than three years later, Kelly Magsamen is now chief of staff to the secretary of defense, noted political activist and defense contractor Lloyd Austin. Filemon Vela Jr., meanwhile, has now ascended to vice chairmanship of the DNC. In Washington, there is always a real payoff for those willing to repeat the necessary slogans.
TUCKER: US MILITARY HAS GONE FULL WOKE
But what of the border? How is the border doing these days? Remember the border? Well, 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 or something we just made up, the president's own flack bragged about it.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY, MARCH 25: 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, at peak capacity, an additional 6,750 beds.
So you break into our country and in return we give you free housing and medical care. What's interesting is to note who's not getting that treatment. Last night, more than 500,000 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.
In the ten days since the above statement from Psaki, no one in the media seems to have bothered to follow up. Fort Bliss, for example, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas, is 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? The truth is, we don't know. We asked authorities at Fort Bliss that question point-blank on Monday, but they refused to tell us. Instead, they referred us to their bosses in the Biden administration, the political commissars. 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. Here's what happened when one of them tried to find out.
BIDEN STAFFER BLOCKS TED CRUZ FROM TAKING VIDEO AT MIGRANT FACILITY
STAFFER: Please give dignity to the people. Please give dignity to the people.
SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: 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 because the political leadership at DHS does not want the American people to know it.
STAFFER: Please respect the people, the rules. Please don’t treat the people as such
CRUZ: This is a dangerous place and your policies are unfortunately trying to hide them, I understand --
STAFFER: Please respect the people.
CRUZ: You were instructed, when 18 Senators came down here, to not show us --
STAFFER: Please respect the people.
CRUZ: I respect them and I want to fix this situation and the administration you’re working for is responsible for these conditions.
"Please give dignity to the people," squeaks the women's studies major from Wesleyan, who is somehow overseeing all of this.
"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.
Officials at HHS, where we referred by Fort Bliss, gave us no numbers Monday when we asked how many people are living at Fort Bliss. They did assure us, however, that "military personnel will not be staffing this site or providing care for the children."
FORT BLISS OVERFLOW SITE RECEIVING 500 UNACCOMPANIED MINORS
That is a lie. It is not true. It is a crock.
We spoke to a person with direct knowledge of this subject Monday morning, a relative of someone who just deployed to Fort Bliss to take care of the illegal aliens there. As of Monday, 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 the military, you must obey; it's a crime not to -- that 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, however, leaked out about what's happening at the border.
For example, the Border Patrol announced Monday they've detained at least two people (so far) whose names were on the federal terror watch list. Both men came from Yemen, and just crossed from Mexico into California.
So it's not just willing workers, it's not just fruit pickers who are taking advantage of the total chaos that Joe Biden has unleashed along our border. Our mortal enemies are taking advantage of it, tpo. That raises the question: How many potential terrorists have crossed the border in the last three months and not been caught?How many gang members? How many rapists and murderers? Those are fair quetions. You can say that you're not allowed to ask them, but of course you are. If you live in this country, you should be asking that question. It's not racist to wonder how many pounds of fentanyl have crossed the border? 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. They tell us inflation isn't real. It's not happening. Then you look around and see that 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 saying 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. That's a 418% 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, the ones that we know about. The real number is higher, much higher.
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How high is it? High enough to change this country forever in every conceivable way. High enough to devalue your political power as a voter. High enough to subvert democracy itself. High enough to make this country a different place.
However, we don't actually know the number. Why is that? We absolutely have the right to know, and we should demand to know now.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the April 5, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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