Several Republican representatives on Wednesday criticized the Biden administration’s failure to acknowledge what they called a crisis at the southern border.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus said during a news conference that the situation at the border is a health and national security crisis that President Joe Biden has refused to acknowledge.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas would not refer to the situation as a crisis during a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
“This administration knew it was coming … they knew this surge was coming because of their lousy policies,” Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs said.
He called the surge in illegal immigration “Biden’s inhumane border crisis” and said the Biden administration is more focused on undoing former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies than addressing the situation at the border.
Texas Rep. Michael Cloud accused the Biden administration of encouraging cartel activity, including human smuggling.
“Here’s the tactic the cartels use: They overwhelm our system with a humanitarian crisis that literally takes our agents off the border, puts them at a computer processing paperwork and then they run drugs through,” Cloud said.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy told Biden “your border is wide open. It is being exploited by cartels right now, today.”
Border Patrol agents are being pulled from the field and reassigned to processing centers, leaving large sections of the border unpatrolled and allowing access for cartels to smuggle narcotics into the U.S., Roy said.
“A strong border is pro-immigrant, a strong border is pro-America, and yet our president is either completely oblivious to what’s going on, or he’s actually enabling and encouraging it,” Roy said.
The Biden administration’s immigration policies are incentivizing unaccompanied minors to travel with cartels to the U.S. border, resulting in child abuse, Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko said.
“Even though President Biden is denying it, there is a crisis at the border,” Lesko said. She added that migrants are being released into communities despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“We were told a couple of years ago that kids were in cages, that it was a moral catastrophe,” Georgia Rep. Jody Hice said.
Trump left Biden with a “good situation at the southern border and in three short months [Biden] has created an absolute disaster,” Hice added..
via westernjournal