Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) submitted that Republicans would “gladly” bring back slavery during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

“Republicans like to see them [migrants] lined up at the border because they know that that’s a stream of labor ready to be exploited with cheap, if any, compensation,” began Johnson.

He continued:

I mean, if you could get back to slavery, you would gladly do so. But if you could pay people a dollar an hour, you would settle for that. And that’s, that’s the race to the bottom that we have with immigrants lined up at the border trying to get in and go to work. And my Republican friends talk about how they don’t like that — how it’s a crisis — but yet they savor it.

Johnson also argued, “Those folks who are coming across are the ones who are helping to put food on our table. Without them we’re not able to eat.”

“We would have nobody taking care of the building, the construction of our homes, we would have nobody cleaning up in the hospitals,” he added.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) says to Republicans “if you could get back to slavery, you would gladly do so but if you could pay people $1 an hour, you’d settle for that.” pic.twitter.com/SoEaQrIFPX

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 10, 2023

On Tuesday, more than 11,000 migrants were caught crossing the southern border illegally, a single-day record. The number surpassed projections for even after the lifting of Title 42 — a Covid-era protocol that allowed authorities to quickly send migrants back across the border — on Thursday.

The Biden administration has responded to the worsening crisis by releasing some migrants into the country without a court date or any way to track them, per NBC News.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman explained the move as a method of avoiding “severe overcrowding conditions.”

“Each parole will be considered on an individualized case-by-case basis,” he explained. “The targeted use of parole will allow Border Patrol to focus its resources most effectively to quickly process and remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the country.”

An anonymous DHS official sang a different tune, telling NBC, “We’re already breaking and we haven’t hit the starting line.”

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