26 Governors Seek Meeting With Biden Over Border Surge
26 Governors Seek Meeting With Biden Over Border Surge
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, SEP 20, 2021 - 02:20 PM
Authored by Phillip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics.com,
More than half of the country’s governors would like a moment of the president’s time – and soon: Twenty-six Republican governors are urging Joe Biden to do more to address the deteriorating situation along the southern U.S. border.
“As chief executives of our states,” they write in a letter postmarked for Monday and first obtained by RealClearPolitics, “we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders.”
The GOP chief executives are requesting an audience “within 15 days” given that the “the crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens.”
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The letter is both a rebuke and an unwelcome distraction at a time when the White House is busy leaning on Congress to pass a $1 trillion physical infrastructure bill, a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package, all while approving a budget that funds the government and increases the debt limit, which is required to keep federal agencies from shutting down.
Long before Biden received this unwelcome request from the governors, he acknowledged the problem. At his first press conference as president in March, he explained the uptick in illegal migrants by saying that a surge in late winter and early spring “happens every year.” Later that same month he deputized Vice President Kamala Harris with addressing “the root causes” of the influx.
Yet, the huge surge has continued and accelerated through the summer. The U.S. Border Patrol took more than 208,000 migrants into custody in the month of August, nearly as many as the previous month when more than 212,000 were interdicted along the southern border, a 21-year high.
Meanwhile, the president’s job approval rating has slipped underwater. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average, more Americans (49.7%) disapprove than approve (45.8%) of the job Biden is doing. His handling of the immigration issue is particularly unpopular.
“The negative impacts of an unenforced border policy on the American people can no longer be ignored,” wrote the governors in their letter.
“Border apprehensions are up almost 500% compared to last year, totaling more than 1.3 million — more people than the populations of nine U.S. states.”
The administration has been busy planning a deportation blitz of the Haitian migrants who have surged into Del Rio, Texas. As the Washington Post first reported, the federal government was prepared to send planeloads back to their homeland this week as part of the effort to stem the tide into a crude camp beneath an underpass where 15,000 have already clustered. Meanwhile, a federal judge on Thursday blocked the administration from using Title 42 authority, a public health order employed by former President Trump to expel migrant families during the pandemic. The administration has appealed the ruling.
Republicans continue to argue that Biden is not doing enough, that the public declarations from the White House that “the border is not open” are meaningless without more enforcement. Some, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, even sent their own state law enforcement personnel to the border earlier in the summer, a move the White House admitted it was powerless to stop.
“While governors are doing what we can, our Constitution requires that the President must faithfully execute the immigration laws passed by Congress. Not only has the federal government created a crisis, it has left our states to deal with challenges that only the federal government has a duty to solve,” the letter asserted.
“We have heard directly from our constituents about the damage this crisis has caused in our states, and it is our duty as elected officials to act swiftly to protect our communities, as it is yours,” they added.
Republicans have presented a united front on border security, and the issue will likely play a key factor in the midterm elections next year. Of the 27 GOP governors, all but one signed onto the letter. The lone state executive who didn’t do so was Vermont’s Phil Scott.
It seems unlikely Biden will sit down with the governors to discuss border security any time soon. Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson, who signed the letter and who chairs the bipartisan National Governors Association, previously told RCP that several state executives were already frustrated that Biden and Harris have not joined their weekly COVID calls, a break from their predecessors’ habit.
Immigration and coronavirus, at least as political issues, have intersected. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed last week that migrants crossing the southern border illegally would be exempt from federal vaccine mandates. And the need for health security, as it relates to illegal border-crossers, was one of the reasons the governors requested a meeting.
“The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states,” they wrote to Biden. “A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...r-border-surge
Ron DeSantis and 25 Republican Governors Demand Southern Border Crisis Meeting with B
Ron DeSantis and 25 Republican Governors Demand Southern Border Crisis Meeting with Biden
by WENDELL HUSEBØ 20 Sep 2021
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and 25 other Republican governors Monday demanded a meeting with President Biden about the southern border crisis.
“A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens,” the group wrote, which includes Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
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Migrants housed under an overpass in Texas.
“While governors are doing what we can, our Constitution requires that the President must faithfully execute the immigration laws passed by Congress,” the letter continues. “Not only has the federal government created a crisis, it has left our states to deal with challenges that only the federal government has a duty to solve.”
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Haitian migrants use a dam to cross to and from the United States from Mexico, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. Thousands of Haitian migrants have assembled under and around a bridge in Del Rio presenting the Biden administration with a fresh and immediate challenge as it tries to manage large numbers of asylum-seekers who have been reaching U.S. soil. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
“As president, you have the ability to take action to protect America, restore security, and end the crisis now,” they added before requesting an “open and constructive dialogue regarding border enforcement on behalf of U.S. citizens in our states and all those hoping to become U.S. citizens.”
The letter from the governors noted border apprehensions have increased nearly 500 percent from last year with about 9,700 illegal migrant apprehensions have previous criminal records. The Governors also said the highly addictive drug called fentanyl has been recovered more by law enforcement this year than in the combined past three years.
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Migrant men bathe in the Rio Grande near the Del Rio-Acuna Port of Entry in Del Rio, Texas, on September 18, 2021. (PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images).
Exactly 208,887 migrants were reportedly detained in August, the Washington Post revealed September 15.
The massive increase since last year comes as leaked audio recordings suggest Biden-Kamala administration’s border polices are “unsustainable.”
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Haitian migrants, part of a group of over 10,000 people staying in an encampment on the US side of the border, cross the Rio Grande river. (PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images).
“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly said. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field cant continue and our system isn’t built for it.”
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A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback uses the reins as he tries to stop Haitian migrants from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuna Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. (PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images).
Meanwhile, federal judge recently smacked down the Biden-Harris administration on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ordering the administration to terminate the DACA program by “blocking the federal government from allowing new applicants, illegal aliens who have not previously been enrolled, onto the program’s rolls.” The program gave quasi-amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants since 2012.
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US President Joe Biden leaves. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images).
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview in August that the case was “rightly decided.”
“The president cannot simply say he is not gonna enforce an entire category of our laws, so the case was rightly decided,” Cotton said. “There should be no more DACA permits issued period. And what Congress should do is address these problems in a targeted way.”
“But what the Democrats won’t do, it’s just that: They want to use the people who have received the DACA program’s benefits as leverage to get a massive amnesty,” Cotton explained. “So even when President Trump proposed a step that would give those recipients legal status in return for things like eliminating chain migration, finishing the wall, eliminating the diversity lottery, the Democrats said no, because they want a massive amnesty.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...ng-with-biden/
