Arizona’s attorney general said Thursday Kamala Harris has not responded to his invitation for her to tour the state’s border with Mexico as Republican lawmakers traveled to the southern border this week to assess the crisis.
‘I guess if you were a philosopher you would say no response is a very loud response because we’ve not received any response,’ Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in an interview with Fox.
Harris was named border czar last month by President Joe Biden as the administration faces a growing emergency with record numbers of illegal immigrants arriving in the U.S. and border facilities quickly becoming overcrowded and understaffed.
During a trip spearheaded by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on Wednesday, Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana said: ‘Forty percent of our Border Patrol agents are busy processing people and changing diapers.’
‘It means that they cannot do their job protecting the border. It means that Mexican cartels are controlling the border. This is a national security and humanitarian crisis,’ she continued during a press conference at the border.
Hundreds more migrants arrived over the southern border overnight from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
Republican House Whip Steven Scalise led a group of 10 GOP lawmakers to the border. He released a video where migrants can be seen in the background being apprehended by border patrol
Here, families wait to board a bus to a processing facility. Biden claims he is sending the vast majority of adults and families back to their home countries as his administration pushes the message: ‘The border is closed’
Data released Thursday shows the number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is vastly higher in 2021 compared to 2020, which saw a decrease in crossings. Crossing have reached an all-time high under Biden
Brnovich said the lack of communication from Harris is ‘disappointing’ and claimed the vice president needs to ‘look into the eyes of people being smuggled across the border, being exploited by the cartels and realize this is a humanitarian crisis on so many levels.’
Biden has also yet to visit the border. Instead, he and Harris have traveled to other parts of the country to promote the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and promote an upcoming infrastructure package.
Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, held two separate trips to the border this week.
Republican Whip Steve Scalise released a video on Twitter around 1:30 a.m. Friday morning where, in the background, children migrants were seen apprehended and escorted to processing facilities by border patrol agents after they ran across the U.S. border from Mexico.
Scalise led a group of 10 GOP lawmakers to McAllen, Texas Thursday evening to tour holding facilities and assess the growing border crisis.
‘LIVE from the border,’ the Louisiana representative wrote on Twitter at 1:37 a.m. ‘This is out of control. It’s the middle of the night. We’ve seen dozens of children flow freely across the border in just the past few minutes.’
‘This is the reality of Joe Biden’s disastrous amnesty agenda,’ Scalise criticized.
Migrants are immediately apprehended as they cross the border and are processed by Border Patrol agents before being sent off to holding facilities
Migrants crossed the Rio Grande river from Mexico into Roma, Texas overnight Thursday to Friday
Migrants wait in line to board the bus to be transported to processing centers
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says Kamala Harris is refusing his invitation to visit the border it shares with MExico: ‘I guess if you were a philosopher you would say no response is a very loud response because we’ve not received any response’
In the video, Scalise said he witnessed about 100 migrants cross in one hour.
The trip comes as the number of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving at the border has reached its highest number ever in U.S. history.
Ranking Member of the House Administration Committee Rodney Davis of Illinois, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul of Texas, Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes of California and House Republican Conference Secretary Richard Hudson of North Carolina joined Scalise on the trip.
Also in two are Reps. French Hill and Steve Womack of Arkansas, Bob Latta of Ohio, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Steve Stivers of Ohio and Ann Wagner of Missouri.
Scalise said before departing Thursday that the trip was also to find out what Biden is ‘hiding’ in regards to the emergency at the southern border – as his administration continues to largely block media from touring the overflowing facilities.
Jordan, who also led a group of Republican lawmakers to the border for a two-day trip this week, slammed the scenes during a Wednesday press conference as a ‘catastrophe’.
‘In all my years in Congress, this has been the most disturbing field tour that I’ve ever taken,’ California Rep. Tom McClintock told reporters.
During that round table, the lawmakers recounted seeing crying children – including one girl who has not spoken following trauma from gang rape.
Vice President Harris has jetted all over the U.S. without visiting the U.S.-Mexico border, despite being named border czar last month
Biden said his administration will not turn away any unaccompanied minor migrants who cross into the U.S. by way of Mexico
U.S. border patrol agents and officers immediately apprehend illegal arrivals
Here, an agent pulls the raft to shore
After arriving, migrants are held in waiting
They then are boarded onto buses and taken to processing facilities
Florida Rep. Kat Cammack, in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, called Biden the ‘trafficker-in-chief’.
Cammack was part of Jordan’s tour earlier this week, and she described the harrowing conditions.
‘Just 24 hours ago I was there in Mission, Texas. I saw firsthand young girls under the age of 10 that had been gang-raped. They had been screaming so loud that their vocal cords had given out. This is a humanitarian crisis,’ Cammack declared.
‘I can’t even in good conscience call President Biden president, I have to call him ‘trafficker-in-chief’ because these kids are being trafficked.’
In March a record 170,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the southern border illegally
Biden has come under fire for reversing tough Trump-era immigration policies, which his administration admits has fueled the rise in border crossings since he took office.
Biden has lifted the Trump policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while going through the legal process to enter the US, narrowed ICE’s criteria for arrests and deportations, and stopped the building of Trump’s border wall.
Last month, 170,200 migrants were apprehended crossing the southern border illegally.
March also saw the most migrant children crossing the border in history, with 18,890 unaccompanied minors being taken into cramped shelters. The previous record was around 11,000 back in May 2019.
‘When you have 20,000 children in custody and the border patrol agents are stretched thin to the max and we’re watching cartel members taunt our border patrol agents as they’re sending these children under six years old across the river by themselves, this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportion,’ Cammack stated.
Florida Rep. Kat Cammack has blasted Joe Biden’s border policies, labeling him the ‘trafficker-in-chief’ as the number of migrant children crossing into the United States from Mexico reaches the highest level in history
Meanwhile, Scalise similarly slammed Biden and spoke of harrowing instances of child abuse during a Thursday appearance on Fox and Friends.
‘I’ve talked to a lot of people that have been on the ground, it is beyond a disaster. What they’ve done not only to these border towns, the mayors, you hear them, Democrat and Republican, expressing outrage over what President Biden created,’ he stated.
‘Over a third of the girls are being sexually assaulted or raped along the journey. Then they get to the United States and you’ve seen how they’re being treated – not given proper food and shelter, being put next to somebody six inches apart with COVID.’
It’s unclear where Scalise obtained his statistics, but Biden officials have conceded that migrant holding facilities are dangerously overcrowded.
Cammack and Scalise’s claims of child abuse come after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott revealed Wednesday that there have been ‘credible’ reports of underage migrants being abused at a facility in Texas.
Abbott said he was alerted to the alleged incidents inside the Freeman Expo Center in San Antonio, which is currently holding 1,370 migrant children.
‘This facility is a health and safety nightmare,’ Abbot declared.
‘The Biden administration is now presiding over the abuse of children. To end this abuse, the Biden administration must immediately shut down this facility.’
Migrants wait on the Mexico side of the Rio Grande river waiting to cross it into the U.S.
Traveling by blow-up raft, so-called coyotes transport migrants from Mexico to the U.S. by paddling over the Rio Grande river
The border crisis shows no signs of abating for Biden, with the number of unaccompanied children arriving in the US soaring.
Some facilities are running low on food, and there are reports of children going hungry and sleeping on the floor.
In one facility, human rights lawyers say children only have access to showers intermittently.
A lost migrant child, crying and scared, was found by a Border Patrol agent on his way home. The boy said he was abandoned by the group he was with
It was also revealed on Thursday that Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services is spending $60million a week to house the child migrants in 10 shelters across the country.
Figures seen by The Washington Post show the cost of caring for one of these youths is $290 a day, and the 7,700 available beds have already been completely overwhelmed.
President Joe Biden also tried to characterize the influx as normal seasonal upticks during his late March press conference.
‘It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March – it happens every year,’ Biden said at the time.
However, top House Republican, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, tweeted Thursday: ‘President Biden said the surge was seasonal. But the #’s don’t lie – 172k migrants were taken into custody last month, a two-decade high.’
However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Republicans are actually to blame for the spike, and conditions are improving under President Biden.
‘The fact is that we’re on a good path at the border under the leadership of President Biden,’ Pelosi insisted during an event in California on Thursday.
She added: ‘It’s about restructuring how we do what is happening there, because we were in a very bad situation under the Trump administration.’
The House speaker is helping push the Democratic narrative that former President Donald Trump and Republicans are to blame for the growing crisis at the southern border.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Wednesday the southern border crisis is under control, claiming: ‘We’re on a good path at the border under the leadership of President Biden’
