Thousands of illegal-immigrant minors—perhaps as many as 18,000 or more—are currently crammed into temporary border facilities in southern Texas as Republicans in Congress, as well as the media, press the Biden administration not just on greater transparency about the growing humanitarian and immigration crisis but on solving the problems, period.
Related: New Images Show True Extent of Border Emergency
The administration is not allowing reporters or media cameras inside the facilities to show the American people exactly what’s happening. Yet a group of GOP senators who traveled to the border last week held a press conference about their findings, with some releasing shocking photos and videos of the cramped, crowded conditions.
“Democrats like to pretend their open-borders policies are somehow humane,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted over the weekend about the situation. “There’s nothing humane about what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing … This is a humanitarian, health, and national security crisis.”
Cruz, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and 15 other GOP senators, were among those who saw the facilities firsthand and spoke to the press about them.
Sen. Lankford posted the following tweets about his visit:
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll just out shows that 57 percent of Americans disapprove of Joe Biden’s approach on the issue—and 54 percent say it is indeed “a crisis.”
On news programs this past weekend, members of the media tried pressing the administration on these issues, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisting on “Fox News Sunday,” “We want to provide access into the border patrol facilities. We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe,” Psaki added. “We are absolutely committed to transparency and providing access to media … and we’re working to get that done as soon as we can.”
But host Chris Wallace pushed back on those remarks, telling Psaki, “At this point, in allowing access to border patrol facilities for reporters, you are being less transparent than the Trump administration.”
Psaki pointedly also did not address—“in the middle of the pandemic”—the topic of overcrowding in the facilities and the clear inability for there to be any sort of social distancing measures or the like.
This past Thursday, Joe Biden appointed Kamala Harris as point person on the migrant surge at the southern border. Neither the president nor the vice president has, as of yet, traveled to the border to see the surge firsthand.
Related: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas: Biden Taking ‘Wrecking Ball to Constitution’
Meanwhile, Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told Newsmax TV on Saturday that the administration is allowing “ideological hubris make them ignorant”—and rather than heeding the advice of experts, it is ignoring them, leading to the crisis at the border,
Republican senators who visited several of the border facilities last week “were heckled by Mexican ‘coyotes’ across the Rio Grande,” the Washington Examiner reported of the trip, “and told not to take photos of holding areas crammed with children.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) told the Examiner that “a Biden aide involved in the tour asked that he [Sen. Braun] delete his photos. Like others on the trip, he didn’t.”
“None of us would have gone down there if we were going to be muzzled,” Braun told the outlet.
Former President Donald J. Trump has said that he may be visiting the southern border in the weeks ahead.
Melania Trump, the former first lady, herself visited the southern border during the Trump White House years—and urged “both sides of the aisle [to] finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” as she said in a statement in June 2018 during a trip there.
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—By CNJ Staff