‘You’re Going To Tell Me The Numbers Are Not Different?’: GOP Rep Pushes Back Against CNN Host About Border Crisis Claim

Republican New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis pushed back against CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Wednesday after he claimed migrant crossings are virtually the same under President Joe Biden as they were under former President Donald Trump.

Malliotakis said it’s up to Congress to give border agents the tools they request, as well as hammering down the message that migrants must apply for asylum in other countries before trying to do so in the U.S. Malliotakis suggested the importance of adding more judges so more asylum claims may be heard in order to alleviate the “tremendous backlog” in places such as New York City. The congresswoman also called for increasing the number of work visas and family-sponsored visas.

“[Biden], quite frankly, created this crisis at the beginning of his term via executive order,” Malliotakis said.

“Well, to be fair, the numbers, in terms of encounters, not that different between the Trump and the Biden administration,” Sciutto said before Malliotakis jumped in.

“But honestly, look at New York City. You’re going to tell me the numbers are not different between the Biden administration and the Trump administration?”

“What’s changed … that’s not flow across the border, though,” Sciutto responded. “That’s because you have governors down south sending them up north here.”

“Six million individuals have come into our country, six million. And one-point-two of them are got-aways where we don’t even know where they are in our country, and then our mayor is misinterpreting the right-to-shelter law and allowing individuals to be housed in hotels and schools. And that’s, quite frankly, it’s very wrong.”

“I’m not disputing the numbers, I’m just saying that what’s changed between those two is that folks are getting shipped up to cities like yours that they were not in the past,” Sciutto said. He then changed the topic to Republican New York Rep. George Santos and his multiple felony charges. (RELATED: Here’s How Many Migrants Have Crossed The Southern Border Under Biden – That We Know Of)

Migrant encounters at the southern border have hit record highs under the Biden administration, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountering more than 250,000 migrants in the month of December 2022, the highest ever recorded, according to a Department of Homeland Security source who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation. CBP reported more than 227,000 migrant encounters in September 2022, outpacing every other September on record, agency statistics showed. CBP encountered a record of over 2.3 million at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022.