DAINES AT REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP PRESS CONFERENCE: "EVERYBODY ELSE SEES THE SOUTHERN BORDER IS IN UTTER CHAOS, TIME FOR THE DEMOCRATS TO WAKE UP"

Press Conference

"As you see the news every week on what's going on the southern border one might wonder are things getting better? Or how could they possibly get worse? Let's look at the numbers for a moment. Just when we thought we hit record numbers in a prior week the next week breaks those numbers, breaks those records. Twelve thousand migrants apprehended at the border each day, over 12,000, last week.

"But here's one of my biggest concerns. The State Department has identified four countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea. How many individuals from one of those four countries is being apprehended by Border Patrol? In September, 1,030. In October, it climbed up to 1,394. In November, another record, 1,876.

"But it's not just the sheer volume that's concerning, it's the very real public safety and national security threat that Biden's open border has created. As we heard from the FBI, the blinking red lights, that's not Santa's reindeer, it's the blinking red lights that are coming from the FBI about the terror threats in this country.

"In my hometown of Bozeman, Montana, over the course of the last couple of weeks, we had two separate cases of drunk drivers driving the wrong way down Interstate 90. Turns out both drunk drivers were illegal immigrants. We may be a northern border state in Montana, but we too are part of the southern border crisis.

"What will it take for Senate Democrats to get on board and secure our southern border? This is not a time for negotiations. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Everybody else sees the southern border is in utter chaos. It's time for the Democrats to wake up."

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