Mike Pompeo, Former Secretary of State, blasted President Joe Biden for his absence of leadership on Sunday’s chaos at the United States-Mexico border. Pompeo emphasized that the White House has no interest in suppressing the overflow of migrants illegally entering the country.
“This is malfeasance,” said Pompeo in a radio interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC. Biden’s administration has “no intention of closing this border to protect American sovereignty. …Huge costs on the mayor of New York City [Eric Adams] … [and] big cities across America. That’s bad.”
Pompeo, who it is rumored will likely seek the Republican National Committee’s presidential nomination in the 2024 election, said the administration has routinely shown indifference toward the southern border being swamped by illegal migrants and cartels specializing in drug and human trafficking — particularly those involving fentanyl.
“It’s close to 4 million [migrants] in these first two years. Goodness gracious! My home state of Kansas is a little over 3 million people [in population],” Pompeo said.
“This is no way to take care of middle-class Americans who are struggling to figure out how to buy eggs and milk and put food on the table for the kids. To have that open border in the South is something [the Trump administration] demonstrated could be fixed. We’ve watched President Biden [act] with some level of malfeasance and clearly no intention of closing it,” Pompeo added.
Pompeo blames White House for lack of action on fentanyl crisis
When speaking of fentanyl, the number one cause of death in American adults ages 18-45, Pompeo blamed the White House for not confronting Mexico or China for the countries’ roles in smuggling the opioid across the southern border.
“We tried to fix this during [the Trump administration]. We weren’t able to convince China to change its behavior. [But] we were able to stop this at our border to a significant degree. Their motivation is really very simple: They see demand in the United States,” said Pompeo.
“There are cartels prepared to buy this and transit it from China through Mexico into the United States. It is a for-profit enterprise,” he added.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is reported to have seized over 50.6 million fentanyl-laced pills in 2022, along with more than 10,000 tons of fentanyl powder across the U.S.
Overall, the agency has taken possession of over 379 million doses of fentanyl through the years — enough to kill every U.S. citizen, according to Anne Milgram, DEA Administrator.
During the radio interview, Pompeo also criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her recent claims of drug trafficking being linked to the “root causes” of immigration from South and Central American nations.
“[Republicans] know how to fix this. … When you hear Vice President Harris say, ‘Well, we have to go to root causes,’ that is just junk. We know how to address this. We simply need leadership that’s prepared to do it,” Pompeo said.
