On Wednesday night, July 3, Acting Secretary McAleenan appeared on The Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier to talk about border security and the current humanitarian crisis. When asked about overcrowding at border facilities, the Acting Secretary told Mike Emanuel (standing in for Bret Baier) that “our men and women on the border have been doing an incredible job with limited resources and without, frankly, a lot of support for months on end. I'm very proud of them. I'm very proud of the dedication they bring to their duties. The fact that they didn't sign up for this - they want to catch bad guys on the border, stop criminals from exploiting the border, bringing drugs into the country. But they've been pressed into service to really process, care for, addressing medical needs, take children to the hospital for months on end now. They've done an incredible job. It's our responsibility, ideally working with Congress, but if not working with international partners to address this flow, and get them back to their priority mission.”
When asked about the investigation into recent social media activity, the Acting Secretary said, “we can't have these kind of comments, they reflect very poorly on the men and women in uniform. They do not represent the kind of people we have in the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol motto is Honor First and in my experience working with them for 15 years, 16 years since we started the Department of Homeland Security, they exemplify that in their mission every single day. So a couple of bad apples expressing these kind of views - they need to be addressed and be held accountable. But it's not representative of who the men and women of Border Patrol are.”
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