Alabama Congressman Barry Moore visits Yuma, Arizona to learn about border crisis

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An unidentified migrant father and his son, from Honduras, wait to be processed after passing through a gap in the border wall in Yuma, Ariz., on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, to seek asylum in the United States. Eugene Garcia / AP

U.S. Congressman Barry Moore participated in the House Judiciary Committee’s first field hearing of the 118th Congress dealing with the border situation. The hearing was held in Yuma, Arizona, where Moore and his Republican colleagues were able to observe the border situation firsthand. The hearing featured three witnesses: Jonathan Lines, a county supervisor in Yuma County; Sheriff Leon Wilmot; and Dr. Robert Trenschel, president and CEO of Yuma Regional Medical Center.

Moore’s questions focused on the humanitarian crisis created by the flood of humanity crossing the U.S. southern border.

107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses – most of them from drugs that were smuggled across the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

“In Alabama recently, I was told that in Birmingham we seized enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in my entire state, so this may be affecting border communities, but it’s a crisis for our entire nation,” Moore said of the fentanyl crossing the border in large quantities.

Moore discussed the high costs that some traffickers have charged people worldwide to cross the U.S. southern border.

“We actually seized some Chinese nationals, [said]a Sheriff’s Department in Texas, and it was $80,000 each,” Moore said. “Folks, they’re not coming here to do us any favors, just so you know.”

Moore discussed the benefits, including cell phones, being issued to migrants paid for by American taxpayers.

“We are actually, with taxpayer dollars, trafficking children, and we’re paying to get them here on American taxpayer dollars, and putting them in God knows what and God knows where,” Moore said.

Moore expressed his concerns about the vast numbers of unaccompanied minor children our government has lost after transporting them to unverified and unvetted people and places throughout our country.

“We’ve lost 20,000 children. [Alejandro] Mayorkas said himself in a hearing he does not know where 20,000 of these children are, and that’s just staggering to me,” Moore said.

Moore appeared Thursday on Newsmax’s National Report with Shaun Kraisman and Emma Rechenberg live from the southern border near Yuma, Arizona.

“The people of Yuma have a story to tell,” Moore said. “The number of encounters they’ve had over the last three years, the difference in what the Trump administration was doing for this community and what’s going on now under the current administration is a remarkable difference. It’s a stark difference in how we handle the southern border.”

Moore said that President Joe Biden should visit Yuma.

“If nothing else, it would show he actually puts America first. We have a president who globe-trots around the world trying to solve other nations’ problems and denies and ignores the problems right here in our very own country, whether it’s East Palestine or the U.S. southern border,” Moore said. “These are things that this administration could lead on, and they’ve turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the American people and the crises we face here in this country.”

Moore said that if the American people knew what was happening at the border, they would be upset.

“A closed border is a compassionate border,” Moore said. “We cannot address immigration reform in this country until we close this southern border and get a handle on what’s going on down here.”

Moore is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has ordered the Committee to hold hearings on the border crisis to draw attention to the problem. Moore said that Democrats were invited to attend the field hearing; but chose not to.

Barry Moore is in his first term representing Alabama’s Second Congressional District. Moore previously served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 2010 to 2018.

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