On the recordJanuary 23, 2019
It is a pleasure to be here and to speak and report to the American people about what we saw and learned on the Arizona-Mexico border over the weekend. We spent Sunday and Monday putting a lot of miles on cars, traveling within 30 miles of the border all the way from the New Mexico line through about two-thirds of the State of Arizona. It becomes kind of interesting because, quite frankly, there are so many people who do not appreciate the breadth and the wide open space of that country. Let me just take a few minutes and tell you that we had nine Members of Congress there. We met with Border Patrol agents, Customs agents, Border Patrol management. We met with ranchers, residents along the border. We met with numerous people, all who have an interest in the immediate impacts of illegal border crossings. One ranch that we happened to visit in Arizona, right on the border, you could look out and you could see the vastness of what our Border Patrol agents are dealing with. You could literally see many miles into Mexico. The Sierra Madres are coming down from their height, leveling down, and then you have two other additional mountain ranges that come on the Arizona side, right through it, kind of tapering into the Chiracahua Mountains, beautiful mountains. You can see the vastness of this open space, and it is many hundreds of miles, and even thousands of miles square. We have two or three Border Patrol agents there and no fence, really, to speak of.…
Source
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