Nicole Malliotakis: “My parents came to this country as immigrants. Many of my constituents came to this country as immigrants. I think…”

“My parents came to this country as immigrants. Many of my constituents came to this country as immigrants. I think fundamentally Republicans and Democrats agree that we are a Nation of immigrants. Yet, what we are seeing currently at our southern border is a travesty. It is not helpful to the migrants, it is not helpful to our Nation, and it has certainly created so many problems that we are facing right now. We have seen over 5 million illegal crossings at the southern border, another 1.3 million got-aways. CBP has seized 14,000 pounds of fentanyl at our southern border, enough to kill over 3.1 billion people. In 2021, more than 71,000 individuals died from synthetic opioid overdoses, and this is roughly 200 people every day. In my city of New York, we have seen overdoses skyrocket since Joe Biden put in place his open border policy, 2,700 in his first year alone. That is the highest in decades. We are seeing fatal overdoses in New York City, on average, every 3 hours. A couple weeks ago, we saw a 16-month-old baby in my district overdose from fentanyl, as well. The only people that are truly benefiting from this policy are the cartels that are making $13 billion a year from human and drug smuggling. We also need to be concerned about who is attempting and is entering our country. In the first 6 months of fiscal year 2023, 80 people on the terrorist watch list were stopped attempting to cross the southern border on top of 98 last year.…”