Sometimes you can believe what you read on the internet.
The authors of the border bill repeatedly assured Americans that their bill would not permit 5,000 migrants or more per day, attributing those claims as “internet rumors” and “absolutely absurd.”
“Right now, there’s Internet rumors,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told Fox News Sunday on January 28 when speaking about the claim. “It’s all that people are running.”
“It would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day,” he said.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) speaks with reporters after meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the U.S. Capitol January 16, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Those internet rumors appear to possess more truth than Lankford. The numbers allowed per day are even worse than in the leaked details of the bill.
The bill would allow up to 8,500 migrants to cross the border in a single day without triggering the declaration of an emergency.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) went as far as claiming Russian disinformation was behind these “rumors.”
“I suspect that a lot of the internet rumors are very well coming from overseas, where they would love to see this shut down because some people would rather not see funding for Ukraine,” he said.
Yet the bill text reads that the Secretary of Homeland Security “shall activate the border emergency authority if during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.”
And there it is… what Sinema and Lankford swore wasn’t in the bill.
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) February 5, 2024
It guarantees that up to 1.8 million illegal aliens can come over our border before it’s an emergency pic.twitter.com/i05pNH29YV
The text seems to clearly contradict Lankford’s promises to the American people.
“This is not — this is not someone standing at the border with a little clicker and saying, I’m going to let one more in, we’re at 4,999, and then it has to stop,” Lankford added. “It is a shutdown of the border and everyone actually gets turned around.”
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
