Senator on migrants: 'Most of them are garbage'

He repeated a series of false or misleading claims that have become Republican talking points.

(The Hill) - Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said on Tuesday that most recent immigrants who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border are "garbage."

Speaking to Larry Kudlow on Fox Business’s “Kudlow,” Tuberville segued from criticism of Vice President Harris as a presidential candidate to his views on immigration.

“I mean, how can you put somebody in charge of a situation where you let 15, possibly even 20 million people come into our country? Now some of these people are good, but most of them are garbage. They come from jails and prisons in other countries,” he said.

Tuberville repeated a series of false or misleading claims that have become Republican talking points, including the number of migrants who’ve come to the United States, Harris’s role in border management and the idea that Latin American countries are purposefully sending criminals to the border.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported about 8.4 million encounters with foreign nationals at the Southwest border from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2024.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates those arrivals, plus immigrants who crossed the border without registry — sometimes referred to as “gotaways” — and visa overstayers will result in a net population increase of 7.3 million people between 2021 and 2024.

Though Republicans have called Harris Biden’s “border czar” since 2021, the vice president’s immigration portfolio centers around addressing root causes of emigration in Central America.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Tuesday told Steve Doocy on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that the border management buck stops at the Department of Homeland Security.

“She is not the border czar. To the extent there is anybody who is a border czar, it’s the secretary of Homeland Security,” said Johnson.

And Tuberville’s claim that “most” migrants come from jails and prisons is a variation of a claim that former President Trump has made for over a year that also alleges countries like Venezuela are emptying their “insane asylums.”

The Hill has reached out to Tuberville’s office for comment.

Multiple fact-checkers have discredited Trump’s claims that “millions” of immigrants are criminals or deinstitutionalized mental patients.

And Tuberville’s claim that “most of them are garbage” is certain to infuriate immigrant advocates, who link dehumanizing and violent language to discrimination and violence against immigrants and U.S. nationals who are confused for immigrants.

"Senator Tuberville's dehumanizing language referring to migrants as garbage encourages abuse rather than empathy and compassion,” said Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center.

“This kind of dehumanizing rhetoric has historically led to dangerous, violent, and hateful policies being unleashed against marginalized groups. All leaders of any political persuasion should denounced this as unacceptable in a democratic society."