Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Reps. Andy Biggs

Interview

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BOOTHE: And joining me now is Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, member of the House Judiciary Committee. Hi congressman, how are you?

REP. ANDY BIGGS, R-ARIZ.: Great, how are you doing, Lisa?

BOOTHE: I'm doing well and Congressman, you also recently sat down with the President on Saturday to talk about this very issue so what is it going to take to break this stalemate.

BIGGS: Well, what it's going to take is Chuck Schumer is going to have to bite the bullet and they're going to have to fund the wall. They need to pay $5 billion which is a substantial reduction from the $25 billion that it will take to actually build the wall.

They need to move - this is - it's all this Chuck Schumer's court right now, there's nothing on the President's desk, the veto or sign. This is Chuck Schumer's shutdown right now.

BOOTHE: What incentive do think Democrats have to come to the table or to negotiate or to get President Trump any funding? You know, Nancy Pelosi is going to take over likely as Speaker of the House just next week and Democrats are going to have control of the House.

So you know what incentive do they have to play ball here?

BIGGS: What's going to incentivize them are two things is that if they really love this country and recognize that the border is insecure right now and that we have to have a wall, that's one thing. The other thing that I think will do it is if they realize that that their base are significant number of bureaucrats and they're the ones who aren't getting paid in the shut down and they're going to get some pressure from their base to come to the table.

And the reality is they're the ones that have chosen to shut this down actually, not the President.

BOOTHE: Well and Congressman, isn't this really a lot of this about politics, is the way I see it, you look - there are a lot of Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer, the voted for fencing along the southern border, clearly they're not against some sort of physical structure being along the southern border.

So is it the wall is just semantics game and a politics game, isn't this just about denying President Trump that campaign promise that he made.

BIGGS: Yeah, you know, I actually believe or not, I have friends in Congress who are Democrats and we talk and I asked them, I said, what's the deal here? You know, one lives by the border wall. I said, what's going on? I said, why won't you give us anything for border wall? I live in a border state, we're concerned.

And they said, well, you know what, one said, I don't like the rhetoric that President Trump uses and the other one said, we're not going to give President Trump victory. And so what I'm telling you is, it is politics, Lisa. That's the problem is they don't want President Trump to have a victory and in so doing, they're preventing this country from having the safety.

When I hear people, just today even some more people from the border telling me, Andy, they're crossing our property, we've got to have - we've got to have border wall and you know what, that's what we need to do, not politics, we need good policy which includes a border wall.

BOOTHE: Well, speaking of the policy aspect, even beyond the wall, the big crisis we're facing right on the southern border is asylum seekers and we've seen a massive influx and people seeking asylum from Central America. Can you tell the viewers a little bit about what's going on with asylum seekers and why we're seeing this influx of central Americans doing just that?

BIGGS: Well, what's happening is when an asylum seeker comes across the border, we do an immediate little evaluation and then they end up staying, we can't keep them longer than 20 days and so we can't process them because the influx is so great, I mean there's thousands upon thousands.

And so for instance, in in the Phoenix metro area, there's been almost 4000 of them released since October until about two weeks ago, that's the total from two weeks ago that are coming here seeking asylum, they're released into the interior, we pay for them to go wherever they want to go because we can't afford to hold them.

And that's what's happening is catch and release and we're giving them a notice, please come back we say for your court hearing to prove that you really are someone who qualifies and you know what, almost 90% of them don't even qualify for asylum yet they're already here in this country, most of them never go back for the hearing, that's what's going on with the asylum policy that we have today.

BOOTHE: Well, something that's not really been reported as much is this deal with Mexico in keeping asylum seekers in Mexico while they're waiting for their immigration cases because as you pointed out. you know 90% don't actually granted asylum in immigration court and the problem is a lot of them go missing in between that time and when their cases come up so why is this so important?

BIGGS: Well, if you can keep them in Mexico which by the way has offered asylum like for instance, the caravan, most of the silent seekers, they've offered them asylum.

If you keep them there then it gives us time to process them before they get released into the interior because once they're released in the interior, they're effectively lost until they commit a crime or something like that where we can actually track them down and I.C.E. can can get hold of him except for unless there's a sanctuary city that's not going to cooperate with I.C.E..

So we have all kinds of obstacles that keep us from actually controlling the folks that are coming into our country. That's why the Mexico basically keeping them there until they're ready to come in or qualified to come in is so important because it's going to reduce the number of people who come into this country illegally that we can't track, we can't - that we don't know who they are.

BOOTHE: Is Congress doing anything to address the asylum issues we're seeing?

BIGGS: We have basically put together a series of Bills, I know the freedom caucus has put together some ideas and some Bills to try to get this going but the first thing that has to happen really is the border wall.

And when I talked to my border patrol agents here, they say Andy, we need the border patrol - we need the border wall first because once we get the border wall, it's going to actually put people into a channel so they're coming to the ports of entry we can control that better and then we can start dealing with interior problems like asylum.

BOOTHE: Well, real quick, how long do you think the shutdown's going to last?

BIGGS: Well, since the President's holding firm and the Democrats have said, they're not willing to budge on this, I would think we're going to go at least another couple of weeks actually.

BOOTHE: All right, well Congressman, I really appreciate you joining us and giving us some insight on this issue, thank you.

BIGGS: Thanks Lisa.

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