Republicans believe that their ticket to a House majority in 2022 is playing up the southern border crisis. On Thursday, House GOP leader...
Republicans believe that their ticket to a House majority in 2022 is playing up the southern border crisis.
On Thursday, House GOP leadership and more than a dozen of their members gathered outside the Capitol Building for a press conference about 'Biden's Border Crisis,' as the signage put it.
'It's disorder at the border by executive order, to channel Dr. Seuss,' said Rep. John Katko, one of the speakers. He also charged the Biden administration with 'twisting itself into a pretzel to avoid saying the dreaded word "crisis."'
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gathered GOP House leadership and more than a dozen members Thursday morning to hold a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on 'Biden's Border Crisis'
President Joe Biden is being hammered by Republicans for the uptick of migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans on Capitol Hill believe the border 'crisis' can be their ticket back to the majority in the House
President Joe Biden ended the emergency order that had green-lit funding for former President Donald Trump's border wall. Now a construction site in Sunland Park, New Mexico is mostly abandoned
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who took the podium first, said Biden's policies created said crisis.
'Because on his very first day of this administration there wasn't a plan to open up American business or American schools, President Biden announced it was his priority to offer citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants,' McCarthy said.
'What did he think would happen?' the top House Republican mused.
McCarthy also pointed out that more than 100,000 migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in February.
'That's a larger populartion than President Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania,' he noted.
Earlier in the day, Punchbowl News reported that Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, had spoken at the Republican Study Committee's lunch on Wednesday and said the situation at the southern border will be the key to the GOP taking back the House in next year's midterms.
Cotton urged his Republican colleagues to drill it into Americans' heads that Biden's policies created a 'crisis' at the border.
A new CNN poll shows immigration as the subject area where Biden is getting the lowest marks, with 49 per cent disapproving of the Democrat's handling, compared to 43 per cent who approve.
By comparison, Biden received 60 per cent approval on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. About a third, 34 per cent, disapproved.
Former President Donald Trump implemented hardline immigration policies - including using an emergency order to construct portions of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Biden canceled that emergency.
Trump also changed the U.S.'s asylum policy and made migrants waiting for their cases to be heard to 'wait in Mexico.'
Biden plans to bring them in.
The White House has been taking incoming for days over the uptick in border crossings, including an influx of unaccompanied minors.
The Biden administration decided to house the unaccompanied minors instead of sending them back, leading to facilities having to be more lax about COVID occupancy rules.
Biden officials have tried to avoid calling the situation a 'crisis.'
'I'm not trying to be cute here, but I think the fact of the matter is: We have to do what we do regardless of what anybody calls the situation,' Southern Border Ambassador Roberta Jacobson said at the briefing Wednesday. 'And the fact is, we are all focused on improving the situation, on changing to a more humane and efficient system.'
Trump, in his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference late last month, used Biden's immigration policies to drag his former political rival over the coals.
'It took the new administration only a few weeks to turn this unprecedented accomplishment into a self-inflicted humanitarian and national security disaster,' Trump said, noting that his wall 'helped us a lot.'
While the House's No. 2 Republican Steve Scalise warned Thursday that there were 'superspreader caravans' coming to the United States, Trump and Republicans used similar scare tactics in the run-up to the 2018 midterm election without success.
In that election, Democrats took back the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years, giving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the gavel once more.
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