Rep. Andy Biggs: 'There is no border'

" You need to understand there is no border," said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked to explain what people who don't live in border states miss about immigration.

"There's no border, No. 1," Biggs continued. "No. 2, the impact of that is everything from drug smuggling to human trafficking to violence."

Biggs sat for an interview with Washington Examiner's editorial board last Friday, before the family separation controversy had fully kicked into gear. The first-term congressman, who represents a district east of Phoenix, discussed a recent trip he and his staff took to the Mexican border.

"We went to a couple of places, and in one place we have a border patrol guy saying, 'That's a drug shack, that's a drug shack. On that mountain is a drug cartel lookout.' And it's all present," he remembered. "And then we went to some of the ranchers in the area, and one of them, on their ranch, a guy was killed just last week. It's just not unusual, and it's rampant. People are just crossing the border."

Biggs, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, cited the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as another aspect of the immigration debate that's misunderstood outside border states.

"When we start talking DACA and fixing DACA by granting illegal status, which as a lawyer I say they're illegal, now they're legal, that's called amnesty," he argued. "So, when we talk about fixing it, in my district they hear amnesty. They don't hear DACA, they hear amnesty, which is fair."

"What happens is it creates a surge," Biggs said, "so now you're seeing even more people back at the border. And if you follow this, at one point in the Obama administration, we had about 1.5 to 2 million people a year apprehended at the border, and the estimates were three to four times that were actually coming in ... The point is, you had this tremendous traffic. It's ongoing. So, that's something to know that most people don't know."

Biggs said his constituents are "pissed off about the wall."

"I'm in Arizona, so that's just the way it is. They want the wall, and they don't care about anything else," he explained.

Biggs announced on Wednesday that he supports the "more narrow" legislation aimed at resolving the matter of family separation of those apprehended at the border, proposed by Rep. Mark Meadows' R-N.C.