President Joe Biden’s policies are fueling a crisis at the southern border that endangers American citizens, puts the lives of unaccompanied children at risk, and fuels sex trafficking, a group of GOP lawmakers declared Monday.
Led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the congressional delegation, including some of the top Republicans on committees with jurisdiction over America’s southern international boundary, traveled to a section of the U.S.-Mexico Border in Texas.
“I came down here because I heard of the crisis. It’s more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak. The sad part about all this is it didn’t have to happen,” McCarthy said, adding, “There’s no other way to [call] it than a Biden Border crisis.”
The Republicans asserted that the Biden Administration’s changes to the previous administration’s border policies have incentivized migrants to make the dangerous journey to the United States and made the cartels involved in human trafficking more money in the process.
In March, Breitbart News’s Neil Munro acknowledged that GOP leaders are changing how they talk about illegal migration to blame Democrats for encouraging the migrants to take the dangerous journeys north.
Two GOP lawmakers addressed the Hispanic-American community in English and Spanish, telling them that President Biden’s immigration policies hurt Latinos.
Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) proclaimed:
We need to join forces and send the message that we cannot allow what’s happening on the border because it’s our girls — Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua — the ones who are being raped. Our girls are the children who are being trafficked. …. Child sex trafficking is one of the highest international crimes booming in this country.
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In this country, you have to arrive legally. We must indeed reform the immigration system, without a doubt. But we should not enter this country illegally because our daughters and our families are put in danger during the journey. Also, the traffickers, the coyotes, are the ones who are making all the money.
Salazar urged the Hispanic American community to “rise” and send a message to their representatives, regardless of which party they belong to, and say what is happening at the border cannot stand.
“We need to stop being pawns of the politicians in Washington and pawns of the traffickers who are trafficking with our children, our families, and our women,” the congresswoman said.
Rep. Carlos Jimenez (R-FL) noted that by incentivizing people to cross in the country illegally, the Biden Administration’s border policies are harming the country while also endangering the lives of the migrants who are making the “harrowing” journey.
“I spoke to a family … that told me it took them 22 days to come from Honduras,” he said. “They were incentivized by the [Biden Administration] rhetoric, by the change of policy … [They said] it was a harrowing trip. Many of them don’t make it.”
Addressing President Biden directly, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) said:
Allow us an audience with you. You have been misled. The policies that you have signed into effect are injuring the American citizens you serve and endangering the children of God who are making the trek to our southern border under incredibly dangerous circumstances.
The Republican delegation visited the El Paso Central Processing Center during their trip, noting that immigration officials held many unaccompanied migrant children.
Rep. Jimenez noted:
For me, what impressed me the most was the faces of the boys and girls, hundreds of them, who are here alone, unaccompanied. Later, when they are released into the country, we don’t know who they are going to be with. You cannot check if they really are with relatives or someone who loves them, or someone who really wants them for other things. This is the danger stemming from the Biden policies.
Rep. Salazar added:
We have come from a detention center where there are thousands and thousands of children [from Central America and Mexico] … Unaccompanied children — five, six, and ten years of age. That cannot stand because this is exposing children to the worst that a child can be exposed to.
Rep. Jimenez called on President Biden to “reverse” his immigration policies and restore some of the agreements the previous administration made with Latin American countries “to make sure we disincentivize people from coming here in an illegal fashion.”