on top republicans at the deteriorating situation at the southern border. lindsey graham is speaking, dip in and listen what was a record number of migrant crossings in a single day this week. >> the director of the fbi said when asked about blinking lights threats, i see blinking lights everywhere i turn. since october 7th, people need to understand what happened to israel affects you too. we have chosen to support israel because we should, we need to. hamas would kill us if they could, we need to be behind our friends in israel. what does that mean for us? the threat level has gone to a whole other level since october 7th. post october 7th, a rose gallery of terrorist organizations are calling for attacks against us. what does that mean? the people who want to destroy israel are trying to pay us back for helping israel. president biden, you don't need to negotiate with any of us. you have the ability as president to stop this problem now and you choose to use the law that is available to you. why is the border so broken? because the policy choices of president biden are not working. next. i've never seen a time when all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated at exactly the same time. next. this is december 6th. fighting age males lined up as far as you can see. bottom line is we are urging the president to get involved and fix this problem. senator murphy is a fine fella, but it's never gonna happen as long as senator schumer is in charge of these negotiations. we are going to have to get the president of the united states involved. he owes it to the american people to fix a broken border. and when i say broken, what do i mean? i mean really broken. in the last four days we have had 40,000 illegal crossings. two days ago was the highest on record. we are averaging for the last seven days 9400 people. we are on track to 3.6 million this year alone, 6 million to date since he's been president. larger than 21 states, the threat level's all-time high, illegal crossings into our country all-time high, and my democratic colleagues are saying what do we get to secure the border. you get a safer country. you are not gonna get legalization of illegal immigrants in this deal. this is about securing our border so we can then help our allies. i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues. i will not do. i will not go back to south carolina and explain why i helped ukraine, taiwan and israel and did nothing to secure our own border. i will help all of our allies but we have to help ourselves first. you don't need to change the law for this to stop, you need the president to use the tools available and change his policies. president biden had a goal to prove to the american people he was not donald trump when it came to immigration and border policy. you have exceeded beyond your wildest imagination. how many americans would love to have the border secured like president trump was able to do it. you can do it, you have to want to do it, you have to choose to do it. so these negotiations need to change. the president of the united states should be involved. he is responsible for this situation more than any member of the house and the senate. he is the commander in chief and when it comes to securing our border, our commander in chief, joe biden, is awol. senator grassley. >> like senator graham, my constituents asked when are you going to do something about the border. as senator graham said, it's already against the law to enter our country without our permission. we pass those laws and they have been on the books for a long period of time. in turn, the president is the enforcer of the laws, and he has decided not to enforce these laws because he believes in an open border. and this is secure -- has brought about a national security problem when you read regularly about 169 -- 169 people on the terrorist watch list that have entered the country and those are the ones we know about, because we -- they are on record. and what i don't get about this whole thing is if you are on the terrorist watch list you never get on an airplane to come into the united states. so how can you fly to mexico or however you want to get to mexico, be on the terrorist watch list and get into this country without being denied the same way you would be if you wanted to get on an airplane. so we have to do something about this and it's up to the president to do it. but we need some policy changes if that's what this debate is all about. i'm really glad that all the people up here with me and people that aren't up here with me one week after october 7th, we sent a letter to the president of the united states warning him about the fact that there could be, because of what happened in israel, terrorist attacks was in the united states. i don't know whether he took that very seriously or not, but we know that we expected this to happen from the people that are on the terrorist watch list. we must secure the border. it's one of the top three things the voters of this country are interested in. it's common sense. it's the law. the president of the united states just like we have have taken an oath to uphold the constitution and the president isn't doing that. >> thanks, lindsey and for your leadership. what yesterday's vote should have made clear is that republicans are dead serious about solving biden's border crisis as part of the national security, part and parcel national security debate on the floor of the senate right now. as lindsey pointed out, this was a policy choice. this administration made a clear choice when they took office to completely abandon and do away with the policies of the previous administration that were working at our southern border. so much so now that you have even, you know, people like jay johnson who was the homeland security department secretary under president obama said at the time that 1,000 people a day would overwhelm the system and he could not even imagine what 4,000 a day would look like. well, now we are triple that. 10 to 12,000 people a day these last few days are just absolutely overwhelming our system and this is a huge national security crisis for our country, which republicans are, as i said, dead set on solving. and we have put forward proposals that are meaningful and real and serious, and at getting at our border crisis. so far democrats have resisted. this president and democrats here in the senate have to get serious about fixing this or not only are we going to continue to face a major crisis, a national security crisis at our southern border but not deal with the other national security threats we face around the world. the lights are blinking red. that's what chris wray said. the lights of blinking everywhere i turn. if that isn't a warning i don't know what is. you have people pouring across the border every day, some of whom are on the terrorist watch list. this problem has to be solved, got to be solved now and the democrats need to get serious about working with us to make that happen. >> it looks like we finally have gotten president biden's attention. 7 million migrants across our borders since he became president. 1.7 million got-aways, people evading law enforcement, up to who knows what. we know how many people were stopped on the terrorist watch list, the border patrol intercepted. but we have no idea of the number of people who are on the watch list who are among those 1.7 million got-aways. and there's another number. >> sandra: we will continue to monitor the senators there on capitol hill speaking up and out, john, this week after we saw just on tuesday alone the southern border hit the highest, encounters at the southern border hit the highest total for a single day ever recorded in our country's history. this is a situation that is spiralling out of control, it's a major concern for voters as we head towards election day, john, and the senators are calling on the biden administration and the president himself to act. >> john: really is quite extraordinary numbers for just a tuesday in december when typically the number would be down. chris oliveras joins us from the border, in mission, texas. first of all, react to the latest number, 12,000 people in a single day crossing the border illegally. an all time record at a point in time when migration is typically beginning to drop off. what do you say to that? >> well, good afternoon, john and sandra. thanks for having me on. as you mention, john, of course, we have not experienced numbers or the influx we are seeing right now since the week of title 42. and we were expecting to see numbers upwards, 13,000 plus, but now we are seeing that now across the border. as you mentioned, historic high one single day, over 12,000, just in del rio, texas, one of the sectors across the southwest border. border patrol recorded over 17,000 encounters over the last five days, not including got-aways or apprehension at the ports of entry, we have a dire situation at the southwest border and we have been doing this for the last three years, talking about it for the last three years, a lot of conversations, a lot of planning, but there has not been any action from anyone as far as trying to do something about the situation at our border, especially with our own federal government and texas, we have to take on that responsibility. we have been doing it the last three years with state funding, troopers we have, with the national guard soldiers, making our own barriers, everything that governor abbott has implemented since march of 2021, now we need action across the southwest border to stem the flow and prevent illegal boarding crossings. >> john: john thune, the senator, mentioned this a moment ago, and something jay johnson, obama's secretary of homeland security said back in 2019, regarding the numbers of people coming across the border and the chaos that it creates. listen to what he said back then. >> it was under 1,000 apprehensions a day before, that was a relatively good number. and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number and i was going to be in a bad mood the whole day. i know 1,000 overwhelms the system. i cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 looks like. we are truly in a crisis. >> john: he said when he was the dhs secretary, over 1,000 a day would be a bad day. can't imagine what 4,000 looks like. we are triple that. and 22000 people are currently in custody and since we turned over the new fiscal year in october 1st, more than 535,000 people have crossed the southern border. by jay johnson's measure we are way beyond a crisis. >> absolutely, john. we are way past that. this is way past any type of crisis. this is catastrophic. what we are seeing now, in terms of numbers. and of course, all those numbers we are talking about, those are apprehensions. we are not talking about the threats we see along the border to public safety and national security, the got-aways, that's at the ports of entry, criminal gang members coming across the borders, and fentanyl. a record level of the amount of fentanyl across the borders because the mexican drug cartels are mass producing the drugs coming across. numbers increase, no action, nothing done at the federal level to stem the flow or prevent illegal border crossings and it does overwhelm the system. over 22000 currently in custody and these processing centers do not have the capacity to house the illegal immigrants. it trains resources on the border patrol agents. some ports of entry have to be closed to legitimate trade and travel because they divert federal resources to help process. it's not what we should be doing. we need to focus on trying to put something in place, a policy in place to prevent anyone to make the journey to the border to focus on the criminal activity that is taking place. the threats have been here the last three years. we need to focus on that before the situation is worse than it is already. >> john: on the screen, pictures out of lukeville, and eagle pass, lukeville, bill melugin has been covering the border now at least three years and we see a lot of single males coming in from africa who are simply looking for a better life. i assume they are probably going to file an asylum claim but told melugin that hey, america is the land of opportunity, we want to be a part of the american dream, and then san diego sector, migrants from china with suitcases. not the normal like the northern triangle countries, el salvador, guatemala, it's like the door is open and the world is pouring in. >> absolutely. first, bill melugin is doing great reporting in arizona, talking to the migrants, firsthand knowledge of why they are coming across, and the majority here are for economic reasons, not a legitimate asylum claim. that's not a credible asylum claim. there is an abuse on the asylum process and the fact you see so many single men from africa, middle east, china, making their way to the border, tells you one thing. it's very evident the federal government does not have consequences in place to prevent what's taking place. if there was consequences, if there was mass deportations, you would not see the influx of single men making their way to the border. and of course, what's taking place in arizona, john, see the influx and in texas, i can tell you if we did not have all the efforts now in texas as far as the man power, the barriers, all the infrastructure that we have put in place from the very beginning, we would be in a similar situation that we are seeing now in arizona. so, we have great leadership in texas. our troopers, national guard are doing a tremendous job, despite challenges but we need federal help, we need the federal government to step in to stop this crisis we are seeing at the border right now, and to prevent illegal border crossings from taking place. you can stop human smuggling as well. >> john: so many aspects to this, lieutenant, and the fact, too, we are not seeing the people come in sporadically, they come in the group, and you don't just send them back to honduras, you have to send them back to africa or china, and it's going to cost millions of dollars. chris, good to talk to you. thanks for help kicking us off today. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> sandra: let's head to bill melugin, speaking of which, lukeville, arizona. what kind of crowds are you seeing there right now? >> several behind us, several hundred behind us again, sandra. we have talked to the people out here the last few days, one thing is very clear, very few, if any of them, are asylum seekers. everybody we have talked to says they have come here to the united states for opportunity to work or to link up with friends and family already living in american cities and you can see the crowd out here. again, they are coming in from all over the world. you can see on the other side of the wall, capitalism will always find its way, some women have come down to give and sell water and food to the migrants through the border wall as they are waiting to be processed here by border patrol. but we have talked to people from all over the world showing up here, african countries, middle east, guys from syria out here the other day, morocco, 251 people from guinea, according to a cbp source and before the sun comes up, we were out here before sunrise, it's cold out here in the remote arizona desert and they grab trash and shrubs from out in the desert and start campfires to stay warm in lukeville, find anything they can to burn. sometimes it's trash and plastic and the fumes are bad out here. but a nonstop flow of people. take a look at the video we shot yesterday afternoon. again another breach in the border wall and masses of hundreds of people began pouring through the wall and crossing illegally, and border agents are frustrated. trying to process the people here, the ones you saw on the live shot and they have hundreds more pouring through the wall. we talked to a lot of the folks out here. they are all expecting to be released into the united states, they are not seeking asylum for the most part, and we had a chance to ask them, where do they want to go in the u.s. . >> where in the united states do you want to go? >> detroit. >> california. >> new york city. >> new york city. i have family members there. >> miami. >> omaha, nebraska. oklahoma? >> south carolina. >> and guys, we hear a lot of new york city out here, a lot of the migrants are planning to go there. a short time ago, new york city mayor eric adams tweeted he's on an airplane to washington, d.c., to talk about the migrant situation in new york city. may want to fly to tucson, arizona, two and a half hour drive down here to lukeville to ask them why they are coming here, and why so many of them are flocking to new york city. because for the last three days, a large majority of the people down here say that is where they are heading to, the big apple. back to you. >> john: bill, it's john here. i have a question for you, because i remember the border crisis in 2014 where we would see small groups of migrants come across sporadically, and hondurans, guatemala, nicaragua, el salvador. but now large groups of, first it was venezuelans, then large groups from africa, we have large groups coming in of chinese people. i mean, this is not sporadic migration, this appears to be organized. what's going on? how do these groups get together en mass from the various countries, continents even and come across the border? >> everything is online these days. smuggling organizations and cartels advertise their services on tiktok, on instagram, snapchat, other social media and they say pay us, we'll get you across the border and they have different smuggling routes. talking to guys from africa saying how the heck did you get here to the southern border. some told us they flew into brazil, then flew into colombia, then nicaragua, honduras, guatemala, and then mexico. it's not like they fly into mexico, it's a months' long effort. they are directed, they pay multiple people along the way, and different cartels control different parts of the border. the chinese are all in the san diego sector. here we see a bunch of africans, and eagle pass, everybody from venezuela and honduras. so, different demographics along the southern border. one thing common across the southern border, cartels control the mexican side everywhere. they decide who crosses, when, where, and how. and how much they have to pay and you'll notice through all of our coverage the last couple years, the mexican government has done literally nothing to stop any of this. there are people cutting through the border wall in lukeville every day on the mexican side of the border. mexican police have done nothing to stop it. mexican military is not up here. they issue humanitarian visas for the people, it's a fast pass to move freely through the country and come through the northern border in mexico knowing they are going to cross into the united states. mexico could do more to help the united states or slow it down and they have not been doing it the last couple of years. >> sandra: bill melugin live in lukeville, arizona, the crowd seems to build behind you. now this. [gunshots] >> hanukkah is the miracle we are jews and did not get killed, and this year a lot of antisemitism and people want to kill us. so we need to fight. >> sandra: a live look now at the white house where any moment now we will hear from the press secretary, john kirby will be joining karine jean-pierre a few moments from now as the world marks two months since hamas' brutal attack on israel and the war it sparked. idf forces are closing in on all of the gaza territory to try to eliminate hamas leaders and fighters who are still there. troops breaching hamas defense lines in gaza's second largest city where they are hunting for a senior leader of the terror group. they say they have killed half of the