WASHINGTON — Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) heard witnesses Tuesday add to the testimony they heard last week: The border is not secure, a problem that poses “a national security threat,” as former drug czar Barry McCaffrey said.  

Tuesday’s hearing, “Securing the Border: Assessing the Impact of Transnational Crime,” was the second in a series of hearings that Senator Johnson and the committee are holding in hopes of laying out the reality of the situation at our borders, garnering accurate information and coming up with solutions that can actually bring about change.

“We have passed bill after bill after bill, and we haven’t solved the problem,” Senator Johnson said in his opening statement. (17:45) “I want to address this problem the right way – recognizing reality.” Tuesday’s hearing, Johnson said, was about laying out the reality of an important part of the problem at our borders – transnational criminal organizations and drug and human trafficking. [AUDIO HERE]

“The border patrol is not adequately resourced,” witness Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), testified. “It’s a national security threat.”

Saying he was “highly concerned about the nexus between drug cartels and international terrorism,” Johnson asked McCaffrey how the two threats intersect.

McCaffrey praised U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement. But, he said, “We’ve got half a million people that walk across the frontier from Mexico every year,” including people from Pakistan, Iraq and “jihadists out of Crimea.” So far, he said, “not an organized terrorist operation. It will happen. We ‘ve got several thousand foreign fighters with ISIS right now, primarily Europeans, handful from America. We are going to see them come home, and the obvious way to get into the country is to cross the frontier.”

Later in the hearing, Johnson questioned the witnesses on the significance of the dollar value of transnational criminal activity. He quoted a United Nations estimate of the international drug problem as being $320 billion a year. He asked witnesses whether the federal government knows how much money drug cartels make off human trafficking and illegal immigration.

“The supply of illegal drugs always grossly exceeds the demand,” McCaffrey replied. Especially when including synthetic drugs, he said, “The supply out there is unconstrained. . . . It’s better to measure shattered lives.”

Johnson recounted his own experience, when visiting the southern border, of standing near an obvious drug cartel scout as he communicated the position of Johnson’s group over a phone. Referring to such individuals involved in criminal activity that law enforcement is fully aware of, Johnson asked, “What laws are in place – or are there no laws in place – that we can arrest those individuals that we basically know?” [AUDIO HERE]

“It has been a challenge for us to prosecute the scouts,” witness Elizabeth Kempshall, Executive Director of the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in the ONDCP, answered. “It’s important that there are consequences to their bad actions, because if they’re not facing significant jail time, then they’re just going to continue to do it and be replaced, because it’s an opportunity to get into the United States. A slap on the wrist and they go back, and then family members can come back and replace them.”

Johnson pressed, “So currently we don’t have laws?”

“They’re very difficult to prosecute,” Kempshall repeated.

Full video of hearing and information on witnesses can be found here.

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