Exclusive--Kris Kobach: CPAC Focusing on 'Other Stuff' While Immigration Is 'Number One Issue'

[Emphasis added]Immigration has remained one of the top issues among all U.S. voters for at least a year, the latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds, while the majority of Republican voters, conservatives, and Trump supporters agree that immigration is the number one issue in the country.Listen to Kobach’s full interview here:Most important, Kobach said, is the fact that the nearly 2,000-mile long U.S.-Mexico border largely remains open for human smugglers, drug traffickers, and illegal aliens looking to falsely claim asylum in the country.“There are huge sections of the border that have either nothing whatsoever to impede people coming in or all they have is what’s called a “Normandy barrier” — that’s just a horizontal steel beam supported by some posts to stop a car, but you can hop right over it or get on your knees and go right over it,” Kobach said. [Emphasis added]Since Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border — as illegal immigration skyrockets to Bush era levels and 70,000 Americans die from drug overdoses every year — Democrats and a number of Republican lawmakers have said they oppose the use of executive emergency powers to stop illegal immigration into the country.Kobach noted that while Democrats and Republicans oppose Trump’s national emergency at the border, they hardly opposed former Presidents Bush and Obama’s national emergencies — some of which had no impact on America’s working and middle class.“We have had 58 national emergencies already declared and 31 are still active … I brought a couple of examples with me,” Kobach said.