by Whitney Tipton
Former President Barack Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that the U.S. is “truly in a crisis” at the southern border.
“A little bit of context here. When I was in office in Kirstjen Nielsen’s job, at her desk, I’d get to work around 6:30 in the morning, and there would be my intelligence book sitting on my desk, the PDB, and also the apprehension numbers from the day before,” Johnson said during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“My staff would tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehension the day before, that was a relatively good number, and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was going to be in a bad mood the whole day.”
“On Tuesday there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I can’t imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis,” he continued.
Johnson isn’t the only Obama official to break from 2020 Democrats on immigration. Obama’s Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan praised Trump’s push for a border wall during an interview with the Law & Crime Network, saying “The wall works.”
Johnson’s comment is a significant departure from his Democratic colleagues, a number of whom have downplayed problems at the border, including several 2020 presidential hopefuls.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker argued in February that “If there’s any emergency at the border, it’s the one he created, the crisis he created,” according to an interview with Fox News.
Former Texas representative and 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke told NBC News that same month that he could tear the existing border wall down if he could because it has not “in any demonstrable way made us safer.”
Presidential candidate California Sen. Kamala Harris previously called Trump’s emergency declaration of a border crisis a “TV stunt,” according to the Washington Examiner.
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Whitney Tipton is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Whitney on Twitter.
Photo “Jeh Johnson” by GOP War Room.
