Dr. Phil admits different treatment of migrants at border shocked him: 'Just insane'

Dr. Phil McGraw talked about his recent trip to the southern border in Texas on Monday night's "Hannity" and why border patrol agents are frustrated by the Biden administration's handling of the illegal immigration crisis.

The former daytime talk show host said he wanted to get a better picture of what was really going on at the border from law enforcement officials who are working to quell the historic surge of migrants.

Border agents told him there are at least 13 to 14 million people who've entered this country since President Biden came into office, more than double what his administration has claimed.

"We hear this number, six million people have come across under the current administration. I talked to experts down there that say that number is a myth, that it’s closer to 13 to 14 million that have come across," McGraw told Sean Hannity. "I asked them straight up, what is it you need here? I was shocked to hear them say, ‘We don’t need more money. We don’t need more resources, we don’t need more officers, we don’t need more legislation. We just need the laws that are on the books to be followed. We need to be allowed to do our job. And we can get this under control right now.’"

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Border agents told him they could get the crisis under control "overnight" if they were only allowed to do their jobs. 

Americans should be concerned about the influx of migrants coming across the southern border illegally from China, the Middle East and Russia, McGraw argued.

It's "incredibly narcissistic" to think these people are coming across our southern border "just because they're in the neighborhood," he said. "They're coming in here with an agenda."

The number of Chinese migrants crossing the southern border has soared from an estimated 1,100 between 2010 and 2020 to 33,000 in the first 11 months of 2023, McGraw said. Many of these migrants are military-aged men, yet no one is monitoring them to see where they are going or what they are doing in the United States.

"I'll promise you, they are expected to do certain things. Are they spying? Are they sending seeds back from farming to China? Are they getting plans in the industries they're working in? Who knows what they're doing, and we need to know," he argued.

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McGraw argued he was pro-immigration but the current administration's polices were not working to keep our country safe.

Border agents are not trying to close the border but simply want to vet who is trying to enter the country, he said. 

"We have the right to know that, to control who's coming into this country. As I said, you don't reward bad behavior. You don't subsidize things you don't want to see more of. But that's what's happening," McGraw explained.

The most shocking discovery from his trip was learning about the different treatment migrants expect from state versus federal law enforcement.

If they run into a brown uniformed border guard with the Texas Department of Public Safety, "they get arrested, they get put in jail and they get returned," McGraw said. But if they run into a green uniformed federal agent, they "get money and a court date, seven to ten years down the road and they get released into the country."

"So you see these groups coming across and if they see a brown uniform they hide. If they see a green uniform, they run towards it," he continued. "That to me is just insane that we have that kind of difference going on down there with guys working side by side."

In December, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources told Fox News that there were more than 250,000 migrant encounters, breaking the record for monthly encounters.

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