During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) stated that we haven’t been “really implementing the laws that we have now and enforcing them” on immigration and “what’s happening now is disgraceful. And to have a policy that invites hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to come into our southern border” is “just wrong.” But he would give President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration a C- grade.
Gonzalez said, “We need to raise the credible fear standard at the border and we need to have expedited hearings and we need to have expedited removals and we need to enforce American immigration laws in a humane way. We’re not going to rip children out of mothers’ arms and separate families like what happened under the Trump administration. But we do need to enforce American immigration laws at the border.”
He then talked about his idea of having safe zones in other countries where people can apply for asylum and stated that there has “been some interest” from the White House in the idea, “but in order to really do it, you’ve really got to put your foot down and say, okay, anybody who doesn’t go through this process is going to be returned home.”
NPR White House Correspondent Asma Khalid then asked, “I am curious, if you look back broadly on the last three years, how would you grade his handling of border and immigration policies?”
Gonzalez responded, “I would give him a C-minus. Passing, yeah. There’s order, to some extent, and it’s dealt with humanely, but, simply said, we need to enforce our laws. We need to scrutinize asylum seekers further.”
He added, “We have extremes on both sides. We have folks who think it should be really easy to come to our southern border and ask for asylum and get into the country, and then you have folks who feel the way I do, that think that we should be much stricter on our southern border. But clearly, what’s happening now is disgraceful. And to have a policy that invites hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to come into our southern border, I don’t care how you look at it, it’s just wrong. And I know it upsets people in my party when I say some of these things. Listen, my heart breaks when I see these people. I know they’re coming from the poorest, most difficult corners of the world. But our asylum laws have been in place for many, many, many years, yet, we’ve never had the issues that we’ve had the last six or seven years, ever in our history. I’ve been on the border all my life. I’ve never seen this mass migration coming across our border and being processed and released, ever.”
Khalid then asked, “What changed?”
Gonzalez responded, “Well, I think the enforcement and the way we deal with these policies have changed. And that’s not a Democratic or a Republican problem. It’s an American problem that needs to be resolved in a bipartisan way. This is real life, and we’re dealing with this on an everyday basis, and we would appreciate more support from the federal government and really implementing the laws that we have now and enforcing them.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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