In an appearance Friday on Huntsville’s WVNN, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) reacted to President Donald Trump’s announcement the federal government would be reopening at least through February 15.

Brooks praised the positives of the deal, mainly getting federal government employees paid, but also weighed in on the negative aspect of it, which was not addressing the border situation.

“There are a lot of pros and cons to it,” Brooks said to WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show.” “Some things I feel really good about. Some things I feel really bad about. I’m ecstatic the government is reopening. This partial shutdown had an adverse effect on the economy of the Tennessee Valley, and I believe the federal employees, by way of example the TSA workers that were ordered to work, weren’t being paid for the work that they were ordered to do — that was morally wrong. And that is going to come to an end. So that part I’m happy about.”

“I’m very disappointed — even to the point of being angry that the minimum of 50 Americans who die each day at the hands of illegal aliens, homicides and/or drug overdoses from drugs that come through our porous southern border — that another 1,000-plus are going to die because the Democrats refuse to join us in appropriate border security measures,” Brooks continued. “That’s a minimum of 50 deaths per day because of our porous southern border, times about 20 days — that’s a little over 1,00 people when you add in the additional days. That part is really bad.”

The Alabama congressman maintained the border wall was a necessity in border security, a term many members of Congress are using as they consider what the next move should be as the February 15 deadline approaches.

“There is no border security if you do not have the border wall component,” Brooks said. “Now a border wall itself does not give you border security,” he said. “It helps tremendously, but there are other parts to the bigger picture in order to have border security. But let me be real clear about something — the phrase ‘border security’ means one thing to conservatives and patriots. It means another thing to socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. To them, border security means helping to secure the entrance and care of those people who illegally cross our border.”

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