WASHINGTON (TND) — Vice President Kamala Harris is being criticized for comments she recently made about border safety.
The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed,” Harris told Chuck Todd during an interview for NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration,” she added.
Mark Morgan, an American law enforcement official who served as the chief operating officer and acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from July 5, 2019, to January 20, 2021, said “it’s absolutely a lie.” He said it’s frustrating to watch the Biden administration “dismantle” effective tools and policies to intentionally unsecure the border.
They took the most secure border in our lifetime and they unsecured it,” Morgan told The National Desk during an interview on Tuesday morning.
“We have this administration – now including the vice president of the United States -- lying to the American people,” he added.
In a separate interview, Morgan said the majority of fentanyl in the United States is coming from the Southwest border.
"Where do they get the chemicals and the products to manufacture fentanyl?" Morgan said. "It comes from China."
Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for U.S. adults 18 to 45 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In July, Customs and Border Protection seized 1,800 pounds of the synthetic drug.
The CDC reported that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021.
"You must secure the border, both in between the ports of entry and at the ports of entry, to cut off the supply. And part of that is stopping the flow of illegal immigration because those things are connected. As illegal immigration goes up, resources are pulled off the line, resulting in operational control of the border literally being handed over to the cartels where they're exploiting it and drugs are pouring into the country," said Morgan. "We need to shift our strategy to a whole-government approach and commitment to go after the cartels equally as we do terrorist organizations throughout the world."