Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn: ‘We Have to Quit Playing Games‘ With Illegal Immigration

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said he doesn’t agree with sending illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but he understands the political reasoning.
Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn: ‘We Have to Quit Playing Games‘ With Illegal Immigration
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
Brad Jones
Updated:
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said he doesn’t agree with sending illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, D.C., but he understands the political reasoning behind the efforts of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to draw more attention to the border crisis.

“It’s a horrible idea,” Flynn told The Epoch Times in an interview preceding a Republican fundraiser in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 18.

“I think that we should be sending all these illegals back across the border. I understand the [political] tactics ... but essentially all they’re doing is exacerbating the problem. We have to quit playing games when it comes to the invasion of our country along our southern border,” he said.

If the Biden administration won’t stem the flow of unvetted illegal migrants crossing the border, then the governors of border states have a duty to step in and deal with the problem, he said.

“The state of Texas does not have to accept these people. They can actually stop them there,” he said.

While the strategy of sending immigrants to sanctuary states or cities is shining a national media spotlight on illegal immigration, Flynn said, having an open-borders policy is a threat to national security and must be addressed.

He warned against putting unvetted “military age males on buses and into planes” and sending them to different parts of the United States.

“We need to send these people back because the problem is only going to get worse,” said Flynn who served as national security adviser to then-President Donald Trump until he was accused of lying to the FBI.

With an estimated 4.9 million illegal immigrants entering the United States in less than two years under President Joe Biden’s watch, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “we’re destroying the fabric of our county,” Flynn said. “We have too many.”
Like other critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, including former ICE director Tom Homan, Flynn said the crisis at the southern border is by design.
“This administration made a conscious decision to have open borders,” Flynn said. “Vice President Kamala Harris is out of her mind when she said that the border is secure. Talk about a strategic blunder—a political blunder.”

Situation ‘Beyond Normal’

Flynn, a lifelong Democrat until recently, said the U.S. political scene has shifted drastically in recent years.

“This is so far beyond normal. This is not politics as normal in this country anymore. We have an attempted takeover of our country by a socialist movement, and they’ve got control of many of the levers of power in our country—the justice system, the rule of law system, our intelligence community,” he said.

The United States is headed down this path to socialism because too many Americans have become complacent, he said.

“If they don’t see it then they’re foolish. They’re blind. They’re not listening and they’re not paying attention, and they’re not reading enough Epoch Times,” he said. “If people cared about the country, and the direction of the country, then I don’t think we'd have any of these problems.”

Still, others are still so caught up in party politics and arguments over big government versus small that they’re missing the big picture, he said.

When asked who is behind the socialist takeover, Flynn replied: “Well, let them define themselves. You’re talking to a guy who was a lifelong Democrat. I just changed parties a little over a year ago.”

With gas prices soaring to more than $5 a gallon under the Democrats and even higher in California, Flynn said he misses Trump’s energy independence policies.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas prices during the Trump administration reached a high of $2.96 in 2018 and a low of $1.77 in 2020. Prices during the Biden administration reached a high of $5.00 in June.

Flynn credited Trump for supporting businesses and pushing back against the Environmental Protection Agency.

“He opened up the industries and he shut down all these environmental protection rules where people who own their own property that had the ability to take care of the environment couldn’t even put a shovel in the ground,” he said.

Foreign Threat

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has three goals that affect the United States: power, resources, and geography, according to Flynn.

“They want to take over the world leadership now and into the remainder of this century, at least as far out as I can see,” he said. “And that’s been their goal for the last 50 to 70 years.”

Secondly, China has its eyes on U.S. resources, “principally energy, but also food production and water,” because the CCP knows the United States has managed its natural resources wisely, Flynn said.

Flynn pointed out that according to some estimates, such as from the Heritage Foundation, the United States has enough energy resources to supply power at current rates for the next 500 years.
“And then, the third big strategic goal is geography,” he said. “Because China has about 1.5 billion people, they could [eliminate] our entire population—the United States—and not even think twice about it.”

Arizona Politics

At the fundraiser, Flynn applauded Arizona Republican candidate Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state.

“There are so many problems with our election system,” Flynn said. “People have to understand how our constitution was designed, and Mark Finchem is one of those people who understands it.”

Some mainstream media coverage of Finchem and Kari Lake, who is running for governor in Arizona, has been “totally unprofessional,” Flynn said.

“They don’t want to talk about the policies, and they don’t want to have any kind of debates about the issues—the real issues that Americans care about,” he said.

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump and host of War Room Pandemic, also attended the fundraiser along with more than 150 Republicans.