Malliotakis Highlights Migrant Crime & National Security Concerns at House GOP Border Roundtable

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) today joined House Republican leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Emmer and Chairwoman Stefanik, along with law enforcement partners in a roundtable discussion about the devastating impact of Biden's border crisis and solutions to fix it.

Specifically, Malliotakis focused on violent crimes committed by illegal migrants in New York City along with the national security risk associated with having a wide open border in a post-9/11 world.

"I woke up this morning and got on the phone with the Director of ICE for New York because in my city, we saw police officers beat by a mob of migrants in Times Square," Malliotakis said. "I told the ICE Director quite clearly that I want these individuals to be deported. Period. We cannot accept in this country people who have paid the cartels thousands of dollars to be smuggled here, and they're in our city committing crimes. Why are they in New York? Well, because our Mayor decided to provide housing, education, legal services, laundry services, food - you name it. It's incentivizing more people to come to New York City. But you're seeing that not all of them are innocent 'asylum seekers' as our mayor claims."

"Look, I'm from New York City. It's a post-9/11 world. Look at the board - 361 people on the terror watchlist were stopped at the southern border alone. In addition to the roughly 8 million people who are claiming asylum, you're talking about 1.8 million that have come in undetected. We don't know who they are, where they are, or what their intention is, and that's what scares me the most as a New Yorker in a post-9/11 world."

"We've caught a number of drug smugglers in New York and believe it or not, because of New York's ridiculous bail law, they've been released right back onto the streets. One of the things that ICE is concerned about is that NYPD has their hands tied and they cannot cooperate with ICE. ICE may have a detainer request for those individuals, NYPD will just release them back onto the street instead of turning them over to ICE, and that has made it really even more problematic for law enforcement to be able to do their job."

In response, Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council, laid out why Americans should be concerned over our country's lack of border security, and what CBP needs from the Biden Administration to more effectively do their jobs.

"The actual estimate is going to be that there's been close to four million people who've crossed our borders illegally and have been able to evade apprehension," Judd said. "That 1.8 million people is what we've actually detected...What really frustrates and upsets us is when you hear Joe Biden say, 'Well I've asked for money.' This is not a money issue, this strictly is a policy issue...If you give me more drones, if you give me more ground sensors, if you give me more remote video surveillance - all that's going to do is count the 'gotaways.' It does not allow us to go out and actually apprehend these individuals because the cartels recognize that all they have to do is flood our resources, and when they do so in one specific area, it requires us to send those resources to that area, which takes our agents out of the field. When our agents are out of the field it creates the gaps in our coverage. When [the cartels] create those gaps they control that area, and we just don't know what's coming across."

WATCH MALLIOTAKIS' DISCUSSION BY CLICKING HERE