White House Claims Illegal Aliens Aren’t ‘Walking Across Border' Despite Contradicting Video Footage

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during the White House daily press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Room of the White House in Washington, on Aug. 29, 2022. Win McNamee/Getty Images

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has claimed that illegal aliens are not able to just “walk over” the southern border and enter the United States, despite video footage showing immigrants doing exactly that.

Jean-Pierre made the comments at a White House press briefing on Monday in response to a question regarding unvaccinated illegal aliens from Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.

“Somebody unvaccinated comes over on a plane. You say that’s not OK. Somebody walks into Texas or Arizona unvaccinated, they’re allowed to stay? Why?” Doocy asked.

“But that’s not how it works,” Jean-Pierre responded. “It’s not like somebody walks over.”

Doocy then noted that “thousands of people are walking” over the border on a daily basis, of which some hand themselves over to border control agents, while others manage to evade law enforcement.

The press secretary again doubled down on her narrative that this is not the case, before going on to cite moves by the Biden administration to combat the illegal immigrant crisis, including installing new border technology and setting up joint protocols with Mexico and Guatemala to catch more human traffickers.

She went on to state that officials have “already made over 3,000 arrests in the first three months of launching an unprecedented anti-smuggling campaign with regional partners” and have secured “record levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security.”

Jean-Pierre also noted that the administration has established “dedicated immigration judges” in an effort to speed up the process of immigrants having their cases heard.

Illegal immigrants are apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and National Guard troops in Eagle Pass, Texas, near the border with Mexico on June 30, 2022. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Taking Aim at Trump

The press secretary also referred to contrasts between the Biden administration and the Trump administration, noting that the former president had focused on building a wall in an effort to stem the illegal immigrant crisis.

“They couldn’t even come to accomplish that in the four years,” she said. “And they also, by talking about building a wall—which would have taken billions of dollars from veterans, billion dollars from schools—which is also a policy that just does not work. It is not that simple. It’s not just that people are walking across—across the border. We have a plan in place. This is not like switching the lights on. Right? This is going to take a process. We are fixing a broken system that was actually left by the last administration.”

The Biden administration’s assertions that people are not simply “walking across the border” contradicts huge amounts of video footage from media outlets, including The Epoch Times, showing illegal immigrants doing exactly that.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said illegal alien encounters have surpassed 2 million this fiscal year, marking a new record.

Over half a million illegal immigrants, some 900,000 “gotaways” had disappeared into the United States by the end of July, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said in a statement on Aug. 16.

Following Jean-Pierre’s comments on Monday, former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf wrote on Twitter: “This is a coordinated disinformation campaign by this administration. To claim illegal aliens are not walking across the border or to infer that they are tested for COVID is absurd. And they know better.”

Elsewhere Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Democrats are “intentionally lying to us.”