Washington, D.C. -- Today, Rep. Barry Moore (AL-02) participated in the House Judiciary Immigration subcommittee hearing on terrorist entry through the southwest border. Migrant encounters for August 2023 are set to exceed 230,000, which makes it the sixth month on record this year with more than 200,000 encounters. Witnesses at the hearing included Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, Charles Marino, a former Senior Law Enforcement Advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Rodney Scott, former Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, and Alex Nowrasteh, Vice President for Economic and Social Policy at the Cato Institute. From Congressman Moore's opening remarks: "Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't think any of us in this room are against legal immigration. Immigration builds a nation, but invasion destroys a nation. What we have going on at the southern border right now is that we've basically had more than the entire population of my state come across and we really don't know who they are." From his exchange with Mr. Charles Marino about human trafficking at our southern border: Rep. Moore: Mr. Marino, you mentioned the 5,000 and 20,000 dollars [that] seems to be the going price now [to get across our southern border]. How do those people pay that money back to the cartels? Do they make installment payments, are they indentured servants? Mr. Marino: "They work it off while in the United States, and it comes in all different forms in terms of how they pay that off. This is where we're extremely susceptible to terrorist organizations, because depending on who funds in advance, the money to the migrants to make this journey, their families are going to be held to account in the country of origin where they start. And the migrant, once they entered the United States, is basically at the beck and call [of the trafficker or other bad actor]." | 