East-central Missouri Congressman Bob Onder is pointing out what he calls “absurdities” on handling illegal immigration.

During a U.S. House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, he called out Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland for defending the Biden Administration’s record on immigration.

“I would also remind (you) that the great libertarian economist, Milton Friedman, once famously said, ‘You cannot have a welfare state and open borders,’” Onder said. “Those illegal aliens cost us in healthcare expenses and education expenses, and, of course, in social welfare expenses, and (they) devastate those programs.”

Raskin and other Democrats on the subcommittee cited the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank.

“Well, we basically didn’t have an immigration system by the end of the Trump administration,” said the Cato Institute’s David Bier. “I mean, he basically banned all immigration from abroad, legal immigration from abroad. Refugees (were) down 92%, immigrant visas down 78%, (and) nonimmigrant visas down 80%.”

Onder, a Republican, fired back when it was his turn to talk, blaming the Biden Administration’s immigration policies for rising drug overdoses in the U.S.

“We have 100,000 deaths from fentanyl, the great majority of it crossing our southern border,” Onder said. “A lot of people forget this: 50,000 deaths from methamphetamine. It’s not made in a trailer in rural Missouri anymore. It’s made in Mexico and comes across our southern border.”

The slew of executive orders signed by President Trump on Monday included declaring a “state of emergency” on the southern border.

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