WASHINGTON – United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined Fox & Friends First to discuss President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, as well as Hagerty’s letter to the Biden Administration on their plan to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
Partial Transcript below:
Hagerty on Becerra’s nomination for HHS Secretary: “At a time when we are facing pandemic here in America, when Americans have serious personal healthcare needs and Biden is calling for unity in his inaugural address, this is absolutely the wrong direction to go. He’s taken an abject partisan— someone with zero healthcare experience, someone that does not have the ability to mount the type of pandemic response we need right now, and a person who has beliefs that are contrary to so many Americans. He would take away the private health care… of 160 million Americans… and push us into a Medicare-For-All type of system. He sued the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Hagerty on Biden’s plan to terminate MPP: “My home state of Tennessee, we’ve got 30,000 migrants at the border right now— that’s more than that the population of Bristol, Tennessee. It’s going to be easier now to get across the border from Mexico into the United States than it is to get a beer at a honky-tonk in downtown Nashville. They’re inviting immigrants to come in. We are going to see tremendous increase in drug trafficking, we’re going to see an increase in human trafficking and we will see these people caught and released into our communities here in the United States. How are we going to ensure that these people get to their hearings? How are they going to test them? Are they to inoculate them? Are they going to give them work permits? There are so many unanswered questions.”
Hagerty on Biden’s immigration plan: “[Biden] has created this enormous invitation to come to America at a time when he’s sending money to these countries that probably will very well misuse it. They have not done a good job in the past with those funds, I doubt those funds will get to their intended sources. At the same time, he’s got an open border policy here that’s going to be a gross invitation to come into our country at a time when we are trying to fight a pandemic… The best policy is to maintain diplomatic success that we had the Migrant Protection Protocols [MPP]. From the point that we implemented them in May 2019 to today, we reduced illegal immigration by 75 percent. That’s made our nation safer, it stopped drug trafficking, it stopped the import of humans that are being abused, and it’s allowed us to have a much more rational policy. When these people get in [to MPP], only 1.5% actually qualify for asylum who are claiming it. That means over 98% of the people who arrive here are going to ultimately fail. How are we going to ensure that they are deported? The Biden Administration hasn’t answered me on that. Are we going to ensure they are tested for coronavirus? Are we going to vaccinate them before our own citizens? And are we going to give them work permits to compete against Americans right here in America at a time we’re trying to work through one of the deepest recessions we’ve encountered?”