WASHINGTON – In one of her last speeches as a member of Congress, Rep. Michele Bachmann alleged that U.S. Border Patrol agents aren't stopping "anyone" from entering the United States.

"I drove from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Boca Chica. It was shocking," she said Wednesday in a speech to the Heritage Foundation. "The Border Patrol doesn't stop anyone from coming into the United States. And it's not their fault. It's the politicians' fault. Any foreign national who wants to come across the southern border comes in. They don't always get to stay, necessarily, but they definitely get to come in."

The independent fact-checking journalism organization Politifact said that border patrol manpower along the nation's southern frontier is at an all-time modern high. There were 17,659 agents stationed along the southwest border of Mexico in 2011. The Department of Homeland Security shows a 412 percent increase in southwest border apprehensions from last year to this year, including families and unaccompanied minors.

Bachmann alleged that if President Obama granted amnesty to people living in the United States illegally, there would "presumably" be terrorists in that mix.

"When the president of the United States announced publicly that yes, he was going to, by himself, unilaterally grant amnesty to potentially millions of people illegally here in the United States, presumably some of them could be terrorists that are in the United States who illegally have come across our southern border," she said. "That's one of our greatest fears."

Bachmann also said the United States admits more than 1 million legal immigrants as permanent residents annually, a figure she said topped all other countries' legal immigration numbers combined. "If you took every other country in the world and you took the number of people they allow in for immigration and you added it up ... every country in the world together doesn't equal what the United States allows in immigration in one year," Bachmann said.

Bachmann

The Migration Policy Institute said that statement is only partially true. The U.S. admits more immigrants than any other nation, but not more than all other countries combined.

"You will see that if you add up just a handful of the top countries (Spain, the UK, Italy, Germany and Canada) you top one million and that is before you add other ... countries," a Migration Policy spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.

Bachmann touted her proposed legislation to give federal officials the right to revoke passport privileges of Americans who fight for terrorist organizations.

Allison Sherry • 1-202-383-6120