Representative Veronica Escobar (D-TX) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that former President Donald Trump caused the current surge of unaccompanied children attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a video House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said, “This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There is no other way to clam it but a Biden border crisis.”
Escobar said, “It is so deeply frustrating to hear the minority leader’s comments. He comes into my community to use it as a prop. He knows full well we have been seeing this flow of humanity from Central America since 2014. This is not a new phenomenon. It has gotten worse over the last four years. In fact, that’s why you saw former President Donald Trump using every medieval, cruel policy possible to try and prevent what was happening instead of addressing the root causes and instead of creating an orderly, humane system. President Trump, for four years, we saw a dismantling of the asylum system. We saw him withdraw funding that would bring stability to the Northern Triangle. We saw him eliminate programs and processes that prevented children from making that trek and applying for asylum in their home country. The minority leader should not be surprised of the consequence of all of that.”
She continued, “The challenge of the Biden administration is dealing with a broken system obliterated by the previous administration, rebuilding it, but also facing the challenge of even more people fleeing their homeland because of hurricanes and because many of those children are ready to be with their parents and families. We can do this as a country. We have to work together. I would call on the minority leader and my colleagues to tell the truth. Only when we deal in truth can we really solve problems together. They can either join us in being part of the solution, or my fear is, what they are going to continue to do is seek ways to divide our country, fuel xenophobia, and racism. I want to warn them that their words and the fueling of that xenophobia, that racism, that hatred of the border, that fear of the border, there are consequences to that language and that rhetoric.”
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