“It’s humane to close the border.”

Vince Coglianese’s interview with Rep. Mark Green. Transcript.

The Vince Coglianese Show, October 10, 2023

(0:30)

COGLIANESE: Joining me now is Congressman Mark Green. He represents Tennessee’s seventh congressional district and he’s the Chairman of the [U.S. House] Homeland Security Committee….

You are in such an important position as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. I want to begin on the issue of homeland security. As we see all of the headlines coming out about the terrorist attack in Israel, can you give us a picture of what our own security situation is like right now, in light of that?

GREEN: Well, we’ve had 1.7 million gotaways, that are known gotaways. Then we’ve got some number — Chief Ortiz, when he was Chief of the Border Patrol, said at least 20 percent more that are unknown gotaways. I’d submit that’s probably much higher, from the videos, the game camera footage I’ve seen from the ranchers.

(1:25)

We don’t know who those people are. We know that we’ve captured terrorists at the crossing sites, the ports of entry. But we don’t know. It’s almost guaranteed that someone in that group — plus add the 20,000 Chinese nationals that have come into the United States. This is a toxic cocktail. And it’s all at the hands of Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas.

(1:47)

COGLIANESE: I see Fox’s Bill Melugin sharing some really haunting numbers, here, of people who have come across the border illegally over the last two years, from the Middle East. 

We have 538 from Syria, 139 from Yemen, Iran has 659, Afghanistan 6,386, it goes on and on. Turkey, 30,830 people. These are just people that were apprehended by the Border Patrol. We’ve got a lot of strangers in the country, and we don’t know who they are or what their intentions are, Congressman?

(2:20)

GREEN: That’s exactly right. There are no guarantees that there are not Hamas cells here. We just don’t know, because of the failure to secure our border. And even at our — this is a really important statistic to know — at our crossing sites we catch murderers, rapists, obviously known drug traffickers and terrorists. 

So if there’s a percentage that actually turn themselves in, what’s the percentage of all those people in the group that is intentionally avoiding Border Patrol. Probably at least that much. So, multiply that times 1.7 million. And that’s a lot of bad guys in America, allowed by Secretary Mayorkas.

(3:04)

COGLIANESE: The Justice Department has charged various people, including Venezuelans, over the connection to terrorism — that includes Hamas, Hezbollah — they were trying to basically prepare actual attacks on the United States. What do we know about Hamas’ reach, and how concerned should we be that it could strike here?

(3:28)

GREEN: Their reach is global. They are funded by Iran, so they have the capacity to clearly move down to Central America, pay a cartel and come up here. So, their reach is global. It’s a terror organization whose purpose is to destroy the state of Israel, the “Little Satan,” and because they’re aligned with Iran, to destroy the “Great Satan” which is the United States.

The risk is very high, and these are evil people. They need to be destroyed.

(4:08)

COGLIANESE: Yes. Are you concerned that this attack in Israel took place without any — it seems like it was an intelligence failure. Because Israel missed it, and of course I would think the United States would be all over this, if we knew about it.

GREEN: Absolutely. We have such a great relationship with — and I was an ex-Night Stalker, if you’ve seen the movie Black Hawk Down, that was my unit — and I’ve worked with our Tier 1 assets, and I’ve worked with Israel. And we have a great relationship with these guys. We would have absolutely shared. So, to say it’s only Israel’s failure is a huge mistake. 

We’ve got to dig into — was this is a data collection issue? Was it a data analysis issue, or was it a political decision-maker who said, ah, I don’t agree with the analysis, or, let’s not notify anybody. 

We’ve got to get into that loop, that chain, and find out where the failure was, and fix it — and fix it yesterday.

COGLIANESE: Your committee has just released a report on what you refer to as the staggering human costs of the unprecedented border crisis. And the top lines here really are jarring. Including that more than 150,000 Americans have died over the last two years from synthetic opioid poisonings — fentanyl, that is. Give us a sense of what you found in this report.

(5:30)

GREEN: This is phase three of our five-phase investigation, the human costs, and we found massive increases in human trafficking, prostitution of young girls. We found increase drug trafficking which has resulted in the death of Americans. We found a nexus to the criminal activity, the gangs, so the gangs in the United States cities have connected, now, with the cartels and it’s one criminal enterprise. 

(6:00)

We found migrants who were dead on the border at highest numbers ever. So much so that Homeland Security stopped reporting the numbers. They won’t give us the number of dead migrants found at the border.

We talked to Border Patrol agents’ spouses, who described the — you know, I recognize it as PTSD because of my time in the military, and as a physician. What she described of her husband having horrible dreams, waking up in the middle of the night, depression, anger, all these varied emotions because they’re simply overwhelmed, number one.

And number two, they are not allowed to do their job. So the job they signed up for, they’re processing immigrants instead of actually being law enforcement officers. And it’s just, they’re boiling with anger at the secretary tying their hands.

(6:53)

COGLIANESE: Can you talk a little bit about these fentanyl deaths? I know that, certainly the precursor chemicals are coming from China, the cartels are cooking it up in Mexico, then it’s coming into the United States. 

But I know the nature of the opioid crisis in the United States has certainly changed over the last decade or so. And that includes that there are a number of people dying taking medications that they don’t even realize have fentanyl inside of them. I heard Vivek Ramaswamy describe this as [“a weapon of mass destruction”] — if they were to put this into a Big Mac, that’s exactly what we would call it. They don’t realize they’re taking fentanyl, and then they’re dead.

(7:28)

What are the data showing in terms of the nature of these deaths?

GREEN: One of the things that’s probably the most frustrating is, you know, the young people who think they’re taking a Xanax at a party, and it’s laced with fentanyl. So, you know, that’s the unintentional fentanyl overdose death. 

You have people who are addicted to opioids like heroin, and Percocet, and the prescription stuff, and they wind up buying a fentanyl to fix an addiction, and they can sometimes die. 

And then you have innocent bystanders like the little baby in Florida that was crawling around the floor of a [rental property] and got fentanyl that was left by the previous renter, and died.

(8:18)

And so the point of it all is — there’s no place in America that’s safe. We all stay in hotels occasionally. How do you know the guy before you didn’t leave some fentanyl on the ground and your kids, or you, step on it? It absorbs through the skin very easily. Fentanyl lollipops, fentanyl patches, this stuff is sold and manufactured that way by our pharmaceuticals.

(8:41)

Skin absorption is real, and it will kill you. And so, the thing I’d love for every American to realize is, because of this open border, because of Alejandro Mayorkas facilitating drug trafficking, aiding and abetting drug trafficking, there’s not an American who’s safe.

COGLIANESE: How wealthy have the cartels become? Based on all of this death and destruction?

(9:05)

GREEN: Great question. In just this last year … they made more money from trafficking humans than they made with drugs. It’s around 15 billion with people and around 13 billion with drugs. So … that’s a lot of money.

COGLIANESE: That’s a LOT of money. And … I don’t know if we can be too harsh, but Joe Biden appears to be responsible for enriching the cartels, sir?

(9:30)

GREEN: There’s no doubt about it. One hundred percent. I mean, and … they know what they’re doing. Even [Attorney General] Merrick Garland talked about the strategy of the cartels. And then Mayorkas got in there, and said he didn’t know it. I mean, which, I don’t believe him. If Garland is aware of it, Mayorkas has to be aware. He’s either ignorant or a liar.

[…]

(11:27)

COGLIANESE: Jake Sullivan, he’s the National Security Adviser, just a few minutes ago, he said the Biden administration is concentrated on a humane solution to the border challenges. Do you detect any humanity, here?

GREEN: No. We’re talking dead Americans. I don’t see that as humane. I don’t see a humane solution for the migrants who are dying, for the migrants that get trafficked into the United States — and then in order to pay their debt back, they have to commit crimes inside the United States. This happens every day.

No, this isn’t humane. It’s humane to close the border and go through an asylum process … and let people … if they are … it’s very interesting. The UN [Refugee Convention] says that if any nation has a migrant come into their country, claiming asylum, [that nation] has a responsibility to address that issue and not pass it on. All these countries through Central America, these people just track right through, and they come on up to the United States. They should remain in Mexico, at a minimum, unless they are Mexican…. It boggles the mind.

(12:36)

COGLIANESE: It does. It totally boggles the mind. Another committee in the House, the Judiciary Committee, released a report this week that says 99 percent of all the illegal immigrants who make it into the United States stay here, under Joe Biden. That is, just one percent get deported. That is not an immigration system, Congressman?

(12:56)

GREEN: No, no it is not. Look, they want to fundamentally change our country. And they think — and I think wrongly so — but they think that folks will come here, they’ll have children, those children will become United States citizens, and in 18 years or so, they’ll vote. And they think they’re gonna vote Democrat. And they’re willing to accept the deaths of Americans, the trafficking of human beings, the enriching of the cartels and all the bad stuff associated with it — just for their own power.

COGLIANESE: Do you think there’s a case to be made to impeach Joe Biden on this alone? Put aside all the corruption of his family. This issue seems like a total violation of his oath of office and the kind of thing that warrants removal.

(13:42)

GREEN: The question will be — and this will be tough for us to get to, but I mean, we will go through and do it, and attempt to tie the decisions made by the secretary to directives from the White House.

So, if you’re going to go after Biden, you have to say, ok, where are the emails, where’s the transcripts, from discussions, and did Joe Biden tell Alejandro Mayorkas to go execute this policy. And if the answer is yes, then the aiding and abetting goes back to Joe Biden. If not, and if we can’t make that tie, we know Mayorkas has done so.

(14:18)

COGLIANESE: Yes. I remember it was Kevin McCarthy, when he was Speaker, he said — actually before he became Speaker, last year —  he indicated on a visit to the border, that one way or another —

GREEN: Yeah, I was with him.

COGLIANESE: — you were with him! So you remember the threat he made, which was, either resign or we’re going to consider impeaching you. And we’ve kind of been waiting, I think a lot of us — perhaps impatiently — for Mayorkas to be impeached. 

(14:40)

GREEN: Yeah, I understand that. And I’m frustrated too. But the problem is, we have to convince the American people, and they have to call their congressman and ensure that their congressman will vote.

And in order to get there I developed the five phases to be very methodical, go through the process. You know, the first thing we did, we went in, we formed the committee and we passed the border security bill. That was the priority. And then we flipped into the investigation. And so … we just finished phase four, we’re going into the last phase, you know, and we’ve got Mayorkas coming before us November 15. It’s going to be fun, for us, to hammer this guy with the truth.

(15:25)

COGLIANESE: Finally, Congressman Mark Green, thank you for being generous with your time. The organizations, the NGOs that have been trafficking humans into the country that have been given millions of dollars each year by the federal taxpayers. How important is it to get them defunded, to stop this?

GREEN: So there are some NGOs that are doing good things. So it’s not all the NGOs that are bad. But there is a group of NGOs who are facilitating human trafficking by not only coordinating with the cartels to tell them which crossing sites have a volume, or where there is hotel space in the NGOs so people don’t have to get detained elsewhere, they get to go straight into a hotel.

(16:10)

But they’re also paying for them to come to the United States, paying for their legal services — which is actually against the law — those NGOs are the ones we want to target.

COGLIANESE: Godspeed. I wish you all the luck in the world as you go after them. Congressman Mark Green, thank you very much, good to have you with us today.

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