During a press conference on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) answered questions about the use of executive privilege on the border.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Senator, we're in this situation by, if I'm correct,
00:06by the use of executive privilege.
00:09We've seen increasing usage of executive privilege
00:12over the last, say, 15, 20 years.
00:19Does the Senate, does the Congress
00:22have power to either overrule executive privilege
00:26or take such matters to the Supreme Court
00:30in the hopes of overturning executive privilege on matters
00:34such as where we are now?
00:36Yeah, look, it is a great question.
00:38And you were right that what caused this border crisis
00:44was a series of unilateral executive actions
00:47taken by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
00:50And where we are today is unprecedented.
00:54So let's step back and have a little bit of history.
00:57I've actually joked that Joe Biden has done something
01:01I used to think was impossible.
01:04He made me miss Barack Obama.
01:07Now, to be clear, I disagreed with Barack Obama
01:10on a lot of policies.
01:13But actually, on immigration, Obama, by and large,
01:16followed the law.
01:19Obama, if you'll recall, deported millions of people.
01:23If you remember, the left got very mad at Obama.
01:26They called him the deporter-in-chief.
01:29What Joe Biden is doing there is literally
01:31no precedent in the history of our nation for.
01:34He is simply defying the federal law.
01:38So the federal law provides, existing federal immigration
01:42law, passed by Congress, signed by the president in the United
01:45States Code, it provides for mandatory deportation.
01:50It says they shall be detained.
01:52They shall be deported.
01:54In the law, when Congress writes shall,
01:57it's a mandatory obligation.
01:59What Joe Biden is doing is simply
02:01ignoring it and releasing millions and millions
02:07of illegal immigrants.
02:08It's 11 and 1 half million that have come into this country
02:12since he became president.
02:13That is larger than every state in America, but eight of them.
02:18That is larger than the city of Houston.
02:23I spend a lot of time on the southern border.
02:25I go out on midnight patrol.
02:27Let me tell you what is happening right now.
02:30When you go out on midnight patrol with the Border Patrol
02:32agents, number one, they're not actually
02:35looking for illegal aliens.
02:37It's not like they're searching for them.
02:39When you go out on midnight patrol, within minutes,
02:43a group of illegal aliens will find you.
02:45They come find you, and they turn themselves into you.
02:49They're all carrying with them.
02:50They have a baggie to protect it from water.
02:53They almost all have a cell phone.
02:56They almost all have some form of identification,
03:00a passport or a driver's license or a birth certificate.
03:05And they almost all have a piece of paper
03:06with a name and phone number of someone in the United States
03:09they're supposed to call when they get here.
03:11And they're being brought by Mexican drug cartels who
03:14are making billions of dollars trafficking these people.
03:18When these people arrive, I'll tell you,
03:21when you look at the women, when you look at the children,
03:24virtually every one of them has been sexually assaulted.
03:28It makes you sick to your stomach.
03:30Troy, you stood there when you look
03:32at a 10 and 11-year-old girl who you
03:34know what the last six months of her life
03:36has been, because these cartels, these human traffickers,
03:41are vicious.
03:45And when they get there, the Border Patrol
03:48just installed a new app on their phones.
03:50I've seen the app.
03:51It's on their phones.
03:53It allows them to process an illegal alien in two minutes.
03:58The alien will pull out their identification card.
04:00They zap it with the phone.
04:02It populates all the different fields.
04:05And they ask them, what city do you want to go to?
04:07And one after the other, they'll say, I want to go to Houston.
04:11I want to go to Chicago.
04:12I want to go to New York.
04:13I want to go to LA.
04:16And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris put them on buses
04:18and put them on planes, and they fly them
04:20to every city in America.
04:22That is directly contrary to the law.
04:28And I got to say, our Constitution, frankly,
04:31was not designed for a president that just flouts the law.
04:37Article II of the Constitution says
04:39that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully
04:42executed.
04:43When you talk to Border Patrol agents,
04:44I know many Border Patrol agents,
04:46they're frustrated out of their minds.
04:48They go risk their lives.
04:49They apprehend dangerous people, and their political superiors
04:52say, let them go.
04:54That's happening every single day.
04:56Now, here's the good news.
04:59This problem was caused by unilateral executive action.
05:02It can be largely fixed by unilateral executive action.
05:07There were three decisions that Joe Biden
05:09made the first week in office that caused this crisis.
05:13The first week in office, he immediately
05:14halted construction of the border wall, number one.
05:18He reinstated catch and release, the disastrous policy
05:21where when you apprehend someone, you let them go.
05:25And he pulled out of Remain in Mexico.
05:27Remain in Mexico was an international agreement.
05:29Trump had negotiated with the government of Mexico.
05:33It worked incredibly well.
05:34It caused our numbers to plummet so
05:38that when Joe Biden came into office,
05:40we had the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.
05:43All Biden had to do was nothing.
05:47But instead, he ripped up that international agreement.
05:51And our numbers went from the lowest in 45 years
05:54to the highest in recorded history immediately.
05:58The good news is, in terms of how you fix it,
06:00if we have a new president in January of 2025,
06:05the first week in office, I guarantee you
06:07those three decisions will be reversed.
06:09And we will secure the border again.
06:11And listen, if the American people say enough is enough,
06:16what I hope will happen is that we
06:18see some congressional Democrats who
06:20are willing to support common-sense legislation
06:23to keep our children, keep our families safe.
06:27That will only happen if their constituents demand it.