Mike Turner calls migrant crisis ‘unbelievable human tragedy’ but also security threat

A top House intelligence official Sunday called the migrant crisis an “unbelievable human tragedy” but warned it also threatens national security.

House Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) blamed the Biden White House for “the incredible influx” of asylum seekers entering the country.

The intel chair, speaking on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable,” said it is the fault of the executive branch for allowing migrants to surge across the border earlier this year after the expiration of a 2020 policy that turned them away because of the COVID-19 health emergency.

“It’s totally the policy of the Biden administration Their policy is an open border, and so that’s the situation we get in, you can tell the incredible influx that we’ve had since the Trump administration, people are coming across the border,” Turner said to the show’s fill-in hosts, former House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-LI) and ex-New York state Judge Richard Weinberg.

“Some of them seek a better life, but some of them intend to do us harm,” Turner claimed, referring to the fraction of asylum seekers who have been found to be on the FBI’s terror watch list.

“Having no controls on our borders mean that we don’t get to choose who comes here, means that they chose and people who self select have their own reasons for coming,” he said.

“It is an unbelievable human tragedy, the stories of people who made this trek, who believe on the Biden administration’s welcoming, that they’re going to find a better life. But along the way, they’re taken advantage of. You have human trafficking, you have cartels, you have risk of life.”

Turner’s comments came even as he touted his panel’s new “bipartisan approach” and praised his relationship with Democratic ranking committee member Rep Jim Himes of Connecticut.

Weinberg, a Dem who is ideologically across the aisle from Turner, agreed with the Intelligence Committee chairman.

“As the Democrat in the room, I’m deeply concerned about the failures of the Biden administration to provide for national security,” Weinberg said.

“We have an open border. Its’ now become a national problem. It used to be the problem of, of the border states, particularly Texas.”

Weinberg’s statements come as New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, has repeatedly called on Washington to take action to curtail the steady stream of more than 100,000 migrants who come to the Big Apple since last spring.

“I don’t have the legal authority to tell people they can leave, only the federal government can do that,” Adams lamented on PIX11’s “PIX on Politics” on Sunday. “It’s against the law to tell buses that you can’t come in.”

Last week, Hizzoner warned the migrant crisis could “destroy” the five boroughs.

Congress has long been at a stalemate on immigration reform measures, which have not been updated since 1986.