“Our sovereignty, our solvency, our national security are all on the line,” says. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), who criticized the Biden administration’s rhetoric on the U.S.–Mexico border and said it has fueled a mounting humanitarian and security crisis.
In recent days, the numbers of children and families caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico has grown to levels unseen since before the pandemic. “Human trafficking, drugs, crime, [and] the draining of our public coffers for education and healthcare” are the consequences of a poor border policy, in Babin’s view. He is the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Border Security Caucus.
In this episode, he breaks down what he’s seen on the southern border, and what he believes is truly at stake.
Jan Jekielek: Congressman Brian Babin, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Rep. Brian Babin: Great to be with you, Jan.
Mr. Jekielek: We’re going to talk about the border today. And for you, this is not just a theoretical thing, your district is very close to the border. So tell me what are you seeing there?
Rep. Babin: Not anything good, I can tell you that. Although my district is not right on the Texas border, in fact several hundred miles from it, we are definitely impacted by border issues, undocumented folks who are passing through. We have a major trade in human trafficking. Houston is a big focus. I represent part of Houston, my district is nine counties. If you look at a map, it includes southeastern Harris County, which is Houston, all the way over to Louisiana, and from the coast up about 120 miles.
So we do have a major influx of some of these individuals. It’s a huge impact on the local taxpayers, on the state of Texas, on our resources for education, for public health, and also criminality. We’ve had a number of incidents down there, murders, disappearances, things like this. So it’s definitely impacting even up in Southeast Texas where I live.
Mr. Jekielek: Tell me your general philosophy on immigration. I think that’s something that people would be interested in.
Rep. Babin: I’m a descendant of immigrants. Actually, I’m a mixture, but probably more French than anything else. The Cajuns who came down, the British actually exiled them from your native Canada—Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Our ancestors came out of there about 1755 to 1759. Nobody wanted the Acadians; we call them Cajuns.
They went where they could find wide open spaces and not many others living there. Many of them settled in Southwest Louisiana, and that’s where my family came to on my father’s side. My mother’s French ancestors were Huguenots, and so they actually were exiled during Louis XIV’s time. That’s not all of my family. I’ve got several other pedigrees, I guess you’d say.
But I’m all for immigration. I think immigration has enriched our nation, our great nation, so much. Each new wave of immigrants coming in brings something new to the diversity and the greatness of our country. However, I believe in law and order. We are a country of a constitution as envisioned by our founding fathers, based on Judeo-Christianity. That constitution has withstood the test of time for about 240 years.
We have to have an immigration policy that is lawful and orderly, and it is anything but right now. We are seeing hordes of immigrants that have been encouraged by the rhetoric of President Biden. Even when he was candidate Biden, all of his competitors, his opponents, in the Democratic primary mouthed rhetoric and promises that basically said, “Immigrants come on up here. Step one foot in and you will be admitted, and eventually you will be on a path to citizenship. You’ll receive an education; you’ll get free health care; you’ll even get stimulus checks.” We’ve seen over and over again that these people listen in various countries around the world and hundreds of countries.
It’s not just Mexico. It’s not just the Northern Triangle nations. Hundreds of countries are sending people over to the United States because of these promises. The humanitarian aspects of this—not only for the American people, but also for these poor migrants that come on a 1000-mile trek, sometimes a 10,000-mile trek, to get into this country with these promises, being abused by cartels and who knows who on the road up here. What President Biden has done with this policy has enabled and empowered the Mexican drug cartels who are getting filthy rich. I’ve seen things called rape trees, where some unspeakable crimes and atrocities have taken place with young females who have made this trek up here. It’s justifiable to say that up to one third of children and female migrants are abused, sexually abused.
Then on top of that is the human trafficking and then the drug trafficking. We have a fentanyl problem. We have all kinds of drugs, methamphetamine, the least is the marijuana. Fentanyl and heroin and some of these others are killing up to 65,000 to 70,000 Americans per year. This is an enormous problem that kills a lot of people in this country. The Democrats love to say we just don’t have the compassion—but any of the things that are happening on that border right now, as we speak.
One of the highest death rates and the highest infection rates of COVID is in Mexico right now. We know that the DHS Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas, President Biden’s DHS secretary, is not COVID testing everybody. But the ones they have, we know there are up to 25 percent testing positive and being released into the state of Texas. Some of these immigrants have been asked, “What are your plans?” “I’m getting on a bus, and I’m going to see my relatives in Houston,” or “I’m going to North Carolina,” or “I’m going to Missouri,” and they’re COVID-positive.
It’s amazing that the Biden administration would lock down this country the way they have and be so absolutely fanatical about wearing masks and social distancing and the dangers of COVID. American citizens are expected to comply, but obviously, illegal immigrants are not complying. It’s not their fault. This is the fault of the Biden administration.
To say that we’re inhumane, one of the most cynical of things that I can remember is that all during Trump’s four years, he inherited a mess down there on the border, a terrible mess from President Obama’s administration. Through four years of negotiating with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries, he established some really good features. For example, the Title 42 public health restrictions, when during a pandemic, if somebody comes in, they can immediately turn them back across the border because of the pandemic. Also, the migrant protection protocols, where people would come in across the border seeking asylum. They can turn them right back and say you need to wait in a safe third country or in Mexico. That’s been abolished by the Biden administration. The National Declaration of Emergency, that’s one thing that Biden has thrown out.
Interior enforcement—we have well over a million illegals who have already had their day in immigration court and were given orders for removal. President Biden on his first day [signed an] executive order that we will no longer deport. They hate President Trump, so much of the Democratic Party, that I believe that the good things that he did on the border have simply been ignored.
It reminds me of Vice President Kamala Harris, who demonized our vaccine. She said, “I’m not going to take that. That’s something that President Trump came up with.” As soon as it came out on the market, and she was elected, she went down and had her vaccination. So the cynicism is there and calling President Trump inhumane and cruel for housing UAC’s, unaccompanied children, in what they call cages, which forced the termination of President Trump’s policies of unaccompanied children and families.
Now, to see the Biden administration scrambling, asking for volunteers, calling out FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and saying, “This isn’t a crisis,” but doing all these things, opening up new facilities. Some of them are the exact same facilities they call cages, and now they’re immigrant care influx facilities and family facilities, et cetera. The same facilities, but calling them by a different name, just as cynical as can be.
Mr. Jekielek: Just want to push back on one thing. You mentioned that President Biden had locked down the country. What are you saying there exactly?
Rep. Babin: I can’t because President Biden didn’t take office until January 20, so I can’t say that he locked us down last year. That’s a fact. But I will say that during the lockdowns of many of the 50 states in this country, some of the more severe lockdowns were done by Democrat governors and their administrations, by mayors of various Democratic cities throughout the country, and I’m not going to excuse the Republicans because some of them had us lockdown as well.
However, I’m a healthcare practitioner. I’ve practiced dentistry for 37 years. I happen to know a little bit about medicine. Of course, nobody knew anything about COVID-19. We know a lot more about it today than we did at the beginning of February of last year. I couldn’t help but be struck by President Biden’s speech the other night when he said that in July, we might be able to have a hotdog with a couple of our friends, wear masks and socially distance, when we’ve got, in the state of Texas, almost 7 million people vaccinated.
It’s time that we open this thing back up. We could talk about stimulus packages and so on and so forth—$2 trillion stimulus packages which we have seen rammed through without any Republican input, no committee work here in the House of Representatives. The truth of the matter is that out of the stimulus package, less than 10 percent of that went to COVID, but the best stimulus package that we can offer this country is reopening our economies and putting our children back in schools. CDC guidelines tell them, the best place for kids is in a school situation, face-to-face with the teacher.
You’re right. I can’t say that Biden had us locked down, but I can tell you that his policies and his party, and quite frankly, since he’s been in office, he’s advocating for a lot of those policies.
Mr. Jekielek: Secretary Mayorkas was presenting in front of Congress the other day. You were probably there. I think he actually apologized for releasing some of the migrants that had tested positive for COVID and announced the intention to not do that. He also said, “Give us the time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled in the prior administration,” and then he said, “And we have in fact begun to rebuild that system.” You’re saying a bit of the opposite. You’re saying, there was a good system, and now that’s been gutted. He’s saying, the system was gutted, and we need time to rebuild it. What do you think of this?
Rep. Babin: I think he’s being very, very cynical. I think he’s being dissembling, because when President Trump took office back in January 2017, the border was a mess. It was a mess. President Trump who I worked with—as the co-chairman of the House Border Security Caucus, I worked with the administration all the time—implemented policies without any help from the U.S. House of Representatives, because these last two years where the House was in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, securing this border was not priority for them. In fact, opening the border was their priority.
I don’t know what they dismantled, because there was really not a whole lot to dismantle, and they’ve implemented these policies under the Trump administration. I think I’ve already mentioned some of them. Migrant Protection Protocols are the “Remain in Mexico” policy, because you had thousands and thousands of people who got the word. These people know our laws better than we do, these migrants. They got the word that if they came up here with children, if they came as a family, or if they were seeking asylum from imminent danger, that they would get right in—and then naturally they did.
They would come in, they would be given a date to show back up for a hearing, and sometimes those dates were two, three years from now, and a huge percentage would never show up for their day in court. This is where the catch and release came from. They would get them, they would take them and they would document them, and of course, a lot of times, you don’t know how old someone is. They might be 25 years old, but they may look 16 years old. You have no idea. You’re taking their word for it in many cases.
So I think the Trump administration wound up with the Migrant Protection Protocols, worked out a deal with President López Obrador down in Mexico, and I can’t really say enough good about President López Obrador. He has really gone the extra mile, and President Trump would tell you the same thing. They call out the National Guard to protect their own southern border, they let these asylum seekers stay and remain in Mexico, and while their cases were being adjudicated and the determinations made, they had to stay there. That kept us from releasing literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers into the country, never to be seen again, and made sure that we protected our border. President Biden got rid of that the very first day in office.
And then being able to deport people who’ve already had their day in court, I mentioned that. There’s a million plus who have had their cases adjudicated and found to have had no credible fear to achieve the status of being an asylee. Without that interior enforcement, without being able to deport people who have already been given orders for removal, we can’t get rid of the incentivization that creates more people coming in, flooding in, and bankrupting our country.
I mentioned my own district, one of my school districts is the fastest growing school district in the state of Texas and a huge burden on the local taxpayers and the state taxpayers. So these are the things that I believe need to be rectified. If President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas maintain this, and if this is not a crisis, then what is? What is a crisis? It is an unbelievable situation that we have in this country today.
I love America, and I try to be a practicing Christian. Certainly not perfect, but I have compassion on these people that want to come up here and better themselves, but they have to do it in a manner that is lawful, that is achieving the national security and the safety of our own citizens. I have met with many, many angel families who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers who are illegals, to murderers, to rapists. I can tell you, it’s not a pleasant thing to sit down and listen to these people pour out their heart, and many of them are immigrants themselves. This is what’s happening.
Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about the role of cartels a little bit. I just had Jaeson Jones on the show a few days ago. Actually, he’s one of the experts on this issue. I just want to find out a little bit more from you since clearly, this is an important issue to you. What is the connection in your mind from what you’ve learned between the cartels and the migration, basically, the surge in migration.
Rep. Babin: It’s a 100 percent connection. You don’t migrate into the United States without going through a cartel. You’re either paying the cartels or you’re working for the cartels. That’s the way this operates. In fact, I’ve talked to people from the Trump administration: if you don’t pay the cartels or if you try to come in without paying the cartels, your life’s in danger. When they come in, some of them still owe money, and they know where they’re going, and they will pay even after they get in. These cartels are no one to fool with and they have been definitely empowered by the open borders crowd in the Democratic Party, and especially by President Biden’s rhetoric. They know our law better than we do.
They send people across in diversion tactics. They have watchers, scouts—I’ve seen them, and some of my staff were with me. We’ll have a Border Patrol agent and he said, there’s a scout up there on top of that hill and he’s watching us. They know where these people are, they know where the openings are, they know when they shift Border Patrol through from one sector to another one to help plug the gap, so to speak, or take people off their jobs to go take care of hundreds and hundreds of children and play nursemaid.
They know that leaves a gap there so the cartels will start coming right through. That’s the way the cartels operate. They make money hand in fist. Conservatively, they probably make about $500 million a year off of their drug trade and their human trafficking.
Mr. Jekielek: Incredible numbers, when you think about it. Of course, the drug trade is a central part of this as well.
Rep. Babin: Absolutely. There was a big bus the other day. Of course, a lot of this fentanyl comes from China, but it comes up through Mexico. As a doctor, I can tell you that fentanyl is probably one of the most terrible substances. Great to use in an operating room or in a hospital setting, but when you get to fooling around with fentanyl, you have no idea of its purity or what’s in it. A very small minute amount of this can kill you, and it happens routinely. We’ve lost, as I said a while ago, 65,000 to 70,000 Americans per year due to drug overdoses.
Mr. Jekielek: We’ve talked on this show a lot about how this is an element of what’s called the Chinese Communist Party’s drug warfare against this country. I want to go back to Secretary Mayorkas for a moment. You were talking about there being a crisis, certainly among the unaccompanied minors. For the unaccompanied children, there is a crisis. He said that HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] doesn’t have the capacity right now even to deal with this. What’s the next step here in your mind?
Rep. Babin: It’s funny because they said the same thing about President Trump. President Trump experienced this huge surge in unaccompanied children and families, and without the housing there, it makes it a very tough, tough situation, and that’s when they started putting children into these facilities. Of course, pictures were taken and they accused Trump of housing children in “cages.” We find out later that these so-called “cages” were made during the Obama administration, and now under the Biden administration and Secretary Mayorkas’, they’re using some of these same facilities. In fact, they’re scrambling to open up facilities wherever they possibly can.
I mentioned one a while ago, in Midland, Texas, they opened one up with no warning to the local people whatsoever. In Dallas, Texas, they’re opening a big one up there, I think they’re going to house 3000. I was getting ready to bring up about Fort Lee, Virginia: they’re going to open up a facility there. Also, right outside of Ames Research Center, a NASA facility up in Northern California, and I am the Space Force Caucus co-chairman of that as well, and I can tell you that we really don’t have much business, any business, sending people like this to NASA facilities. That’s absolutely not what the mandate and responsibility of NASA is.
To go back to your question, it’s cynical for them to criticize and condemn President Trump, and then they’re doing the exact same thing, and it would not have happened had they continue the policies—which came from hard earned and tough experience. They know the hard knocks way to learn things is exactly what President Trump’s people did, and that’s how they came up with these various policies.
President Biden should have waited before he made these executive orders on the first day and subsequent days. They should have seen how things were going to happen. Everyone knew—everyone knew that if Biden had won the presidency, we knew that there were going to be open borders. They said it over and over and over again, every one of the Democratic candidates for president, including Vice President Harris, they want open borders.
Mr. Jekielek: They want open borders?
Rep. Babin: They want open borders. That’s the only way I can figure it, Jan. I know, you’re thinking, how do you know what they want?
Mr. Jekielek: There’s a long distance between a closed border and an open border. Open border means there’s no border.
Rep. Babin: We essentially have no border now, Jan. We essentially have no border. These people are coming in at will. They just walk in and give up. They know that if they get a foot in, that they’ve been promised that they’re going to be able to stay. I call that an open border. I don’t see any controls there whatsoever.
I think we had 77,000 illegals come across in January. We had 100,400-some that came across in February. We’re on track this month to be well over that, and then they think by May, we could have a couple of 100,000 a month coming across. If that’s not a crisis—in fact, I’d say it’s not a crisis, it’s a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe for this country and for our taxpayers on every level. On terrorism, they caught four coming across recently that were on the terrorist watch list. There was a Serb and three Yemanese that came across who were on the terrorist watchlist.
So we’ve got terrorism potential. We’ve got criminality, lots of gangs. The criminality, terrorism, human trafficking, drugs, crime, the draining of our public coffers for education and health care, there’s really no handle on this unless they start instituting some policies to keep people from coming in until we can get it in an orderly fashion. We’re going to get people killed, and we are getting people killed.
Mr. Jekielek: How?
Rep. Babin: How? By encouraging the people to come up here, to make that. Migrants are dying. I can show you some horrible looking pictures of drownings. Floating in the Rio Grande, a man and his three three-year-old daughter, both of them facedown in the water. I’ve seen the rape trees. We know what’s happening in sanctuary cities. We know what’s happening when the local authorities do not cooperate with immigration authorities. We know that there are people that are loose in this country who are criminals.
Mr. Jekielek: You’re in the minority in Congress right now. Obviously, you’re not the fan of the administration’s policies. What can be done in your mind to fix this at this point? What are you doing to fix it?
Rep. Babin: Exactly what I’m doing right now, Jan. The mainstream media doesn’t get this information out there. They don’t want people to know of the crime, the deaths, the overdoses, the terrorism. They don’t want to see the things that are happening down on the border. They don’t want people to know. In fact, I’ll tell you how I know that, because we have a recent gag order, unofficial gag order, coming down from the Biden administration, when the Border Patrols and sector chiefs on the border are not allowed to give out statistics, to show photographs or videos, or even to speak with the media.
One of my colleagues went to a facility in Midland, Texas, to see a brand spanking new, recently opened juvenile detention center, and they would not let him in, and he’s a member of Congress. They finally let him in after some pressure was brought to bear. This is the one I was telling you about a while ago, there was little to no advance warning to the local authorities that this facility was going to be opened up. They’re trying to hide this.
The Democrat Party, the mainstream media, they don’t want the average American to know of the disaster that is going on at our borders. I know that it sounds incredible when I talk about what’s happening down there, but I’ve seen a lot of it with my own eyes, and I know people that are down there. I know people that work for the Border Patrol.
I have a long relationship of four years with numbers of the Trump administration who worked in the Border Patrol and ICE who were even close to the president and his advisors. I worked with them a lot and made suggestions. I still have conversations with them, and they are very, very upset that they had finally gotten a handle on the border situation towards the last year or so of the Trump administration, only to see it thrown out of the window by foolish, foolish decisions on the part of President Biden and his administration.
Mr. Jekielek: One of the decisions was also to stop the border wall construction. I need to get you to tell me about what you think about that, although I think I know.
Rep. Babin: I can tell you that barriers do work. When I hear Speaker Pelosi say their walls are immoral, and I’ve heard a number of other Democrat, elected officials, say that, I look and their own private homes are behind walls. They stopped building the wall down on the southern border. We know that walls work.
I have been to San Diego, California. I have been to El Paso, Texas. Before those walls were built, they had illegal immigrants pouring across there, and they think that those walls reduced immigration by 95 percent. So when we see President Biden halting all wall construction on day one of his administration—and I have seen videos of people who may have a wall with a three or four mile junction in the middle that’s missing—wall here, no wall here, wall there—that’s where they come.
I’ve seen with my own eyes where a wall stopped. Sasabe, Arizona, nice big 20-foot wall, steel bollards, you get to the end of it, there’s a five strand barbed wire fence. It’s a gate tied with a linen card. You walk around the wall and you see a well worn path going down the valley and up over the hill. The migrants have come around the wall. The coyotes are the ones that work for the cartels and they bring these people to these areas where it’s not complete—but walls work.
You can go right out here, and see that although Mrs. Pelosi claims they’re immoral, there’s a seven-foot steel fence for miles around Capitol Hill here. The nation’s Capitol, a beacon of freedom in the world, seven-foot steel wall, coils of razor wire, and thousands of U.S. Army National Guard troops. If walls don’t work, then Miss Pelosi, why are they here? You say to protect our Capitol, and we find out from the FBI, there’s no credible threat here. They have not been able to tell us that there’s a credible threat.
We’ve got a wall here but down on the southern border where there is a crisis and a catastrophe occurring right now, they’re not completing the wall. It just doesn’t make any sense. There is so much hatred of Donald J. Trump that they will not take the good things that this man has done, and his administration has done, to secure this border and maintain them so they can get a handle and protect Americans, protect the migrants themselves. Let me tell you, our sovereignty, our solvency, our national security are all on the line because of what’s going on and created down there on the southern border.
Mr. Jekielek: In the end, what is the House Border Security Caucus working on as we speak?
Rep. Babin: Right now, there’s not a whole lot of rapport with this Biden administration. We’re reaching out to them. I’ve written a number of letters. I and many of my colleagues are asking questions about why they’re abolishing some of these very efficient and good policies that worked under the Trump administration, or asking about COVID and why they’re releasing COVID-positive immigrants loose into Texas, across the border, and to fan out into the rest of the country. Communication is what’s really the important aspect of what we’re doing now to inform the American people, to try to see if we can elicit some answers out of the Biden administration, and to get our own membership versed up in just how serious the situation is down on the border.
Mr. Jekielek: Before we finish up, I want to touch on this other area of interest. I see you have the NASA pin on your lapel there. You’re the ranking member of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee and also the Space Force Caucus. This is a big topic, a big issue for you. You mentioned, of course, the NASA facility earlier. We haven’t heard very much about what’s happening with the Space Force. We haven’t heard very much about what’s happening with the U.S. approach to space at the moment, aside from the information we’re hearing from the private sector. So what’s going on?
Rep. Babin: It’s funny that you say that because when asked, the press secretary of President Biden made a comment several weeks ago. When asked about the Space Force, she made a very, very snide comment like, “oh, that,” or something of that nature. But the Space Force is an extremely important part of our U.S. military today. It is something that we’ve been talking about for years and under President Trump, has become a reality.
Our adversaries, the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans and others have pushed the war-fighting domain from earth and in the atmosphere to up in space. It was time that we made moves to have a special branch of the service that would be concentrated on nothing but space, and defend our great country from adversaries who would attack us and do harm to us from space.
I was very, very glad to be a part of that as the ranking member and former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. We actually were the authorizing body over NASA, our civil space administration. Some people say there are no military aspects to NASA. There aren’t, but what is developed by NASA can certainly be utilized by our military. In other words, it does expand and increase our warfighters capabilities.
You can look at some of our adversaries like China. China’s space program is military, Russia’s is military, while ours is civil. If we develop things on our civil side, I promise you on the military side, they will benefit from that. So, it’s been a great honor for me to be the co-chairman of that caucus for the Space Force. I certainly hope that the Biden administration takes that very, very seriously, at least on the order that President Trump did.
We’ve got some great things happening on our civil space side too, in NASA. We’ve seen more commercial operations. We just saw for the last 9 or 10 years, we had not been able to put American astronauts even up on the International Space Station on American rockets because we didn’t have that capability anymore. So we’ve been buying tickets, if you will, between $70 million and $90 million a ride from the Russians to put our own astronauts up there.
A commercial rocket from SpaceX this past year launched two American astronauts to the International Space Station. That is something I’m very proud to see, that America will not be dependent upon foreign powers, especially one that might not be quite so friendly with us, and that’s Russia. But we can do it ourselves. American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, we can do that now.
Mr. Jekielek: What can we expect with the Space Force? That’s the big question on a number of people’s minds.
Rep. Babin: It’s in the making. We just celebrated the one year anniversary of the Space Force in recent months. General Raymond is the commander. He’s had an opportunity to create a brand new branch of the U.S. military. We haven’t seen that since 1947, when the U.S. Air Force was split off from the U.S. Army. They were the U.S. Army Air Corps, and they created the Air Force.
I’m a former Air Force officer myself. General Raymond has done a really, really great job in putting this thing together. It’s a very agile force; it’s a small force. Quite frankly, I hope they stay agile so that we can save taxpayers money and acquisitions and also be as efficient as possible, because we’ve seen a lot of branches of our military not quite so agile anymore. We nevertheless have to defend this great country.
Without a military in today’s world that is tops, we’re in bad shape. So hopefully, the Space Force will continue to do what they’re designed to do, and join forces and ranks with the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and protect us. As a former military officer myself, it makes me proud to see that. I just hope that the Biden administration will take it very, very seriously because I can tell you that the Chinese and Russians are taking it very seriously.
Mr. Jekielek: Any final thoughts before we finish up?
Rep. Babin: I’m very interested in space, not only because of my committees but also because I represent Johnson Space Center, the largest NASA facility in the country. They’re in Houston, the Mission Control International Space Station. It’s a great privilege to be able to represent Johnson.
We have a great country. This country was an experiment in freedom 342 years ago. The world will not be as good of a place without having a free America. If we’re such an evil country as some of the left-wing Marxists are telling folks, why are millions of people clamoring to get into the United States? Why? Because we are a great country, free, and you have an opportunity to do wonderful things here.
But you have to love this country, and many of our folks don’t. It’s really sad to see folks who are convinced that America is a bad country. That pains me. I have 17 grandchildren. I want them to appreciate what America is, because I can tell you this world would be a dark, dark place without having an America, so that we could see that beacon of freedom, the shining city on the hill that President Reagan mentioned. If that wasn’t there, it would not be as pleasant to live on this planet.
I really believe that we’ve got to maintain our freedoms and our liberties against seemingly great odds that want to destroy our constitution and set up a socialist economic system rather than economic freedom, and repress our freedom of speech. Thank you for your entity that wants to get real news out there and find out what’s going on.
Number two is protecting our gun rights. This first and second amendment, they could hardly be any more important. I know what socialism is. You can read history books, in so many of them socialist countries start out by repressing your freedom of speech and then they take away your right to protect yourself. Then you have a socialist dictatorship. I want America to be free.
Mr. Jekielek: Congressman Babin, such a pleasure to have you on.
Rep. Babin: Thank you, Jan.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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