Former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Karen Tandy, said Thursday the southern border of the U.S. is “collapsing” from the immigration crisis.

“Our border is collapsing, plain and simple,” she said on “Fox & Friends.”

“What’s happened is principally Central American families, which consist primarily of one adult and a child, are being encouraged by drug traffickers and smuggling organizations to bring a child and get across a border. And why is that important? Because it’s become a swinging door,” she said.

Tandy said migrants only need to make it across the border before they are released back out into the general population with minimal fuss.

“They get across the border and then they get released into the United States because Customs and Border Protection is doing all they can and doing it valiantly, but there are no transportation services,” she said “There’s none of the services needed either to take care of these endangered children, and they are in danger, or to address the security at the border.”

Tandy also said most illegal immigrant families are released after only 20 days in detention, because the government is running out of space to house them.

“So what happened in 1997, there was a court opinion that held that minors, children are limited to 20 days in detention. So customs and border protection can’t keep them longer than 20 days if they were unaccompanied minors coming across the border,” she said. “What happened after that, more recently in the last year was that the court took that opinion and added on to it, expanded it to also include these family units. So even though the child is accompanied, even though the child has a parent or a guardian with them, the court said you also are limited to 20 days as to these family units.”

“There’s no place to put these people,” Tandy added. “They are surging beyond the wildest numbers and what happens is they get released, they’re given a notice to appear and they disappear into the United States.”

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