Two border state members of Congress, both Democrats, have announced they will not seek reelection as President Joe Biden attempts to deal with a crisis on the southern border of the United States.
Texas Rep. Filemon Vela (D), who has served five terms, announced Monday he would be leaving Congress ahead of certain redistricting in the state next year. Vela said in a statement:
I will not be seeking reelection to the House of Representatives in 2022. I will continue to focus on maintaining a Democratic House and Senate Majority in my capacity as a member of Congress and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, while working diligently for the people I am so grateful to represent.
Vela is following in the steps of Arizona Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D), who serves the state’s 2nd District and announced last week that she would not seek another term in Congress, saying she is “sort of term-limiting myself.”
“I’ve been in public service for 18 years and I’ve always been a proponent of term limits and … I’m sort of term-limiting myself,” Kirkpatrick said.
“It’s time to pass along the torch, the baton, and let somebody else take over,” she added. “Plus, quite honestly, there’s a personal interest. I have three grandsons. … We would just like to be available to them, spend more time with them.”
As reported by Axios, “Biden appointed his wife, Rose Vela, a retired Texas state district judge and Texas appellate justice, to run the president’s Commission on White House Fellowships.”
Both Vela and Kirkpatrick announced they would not seek reelection as a surge of migrants reach the southern border seeking entry into the country.
On Monday, Mexico deployed more than 8,700 soldiers to the border in an attempt to curb the flow of migrants reaching the United States. It was also reported this week that the Biden administration had begun catching and immediately releasing migrant families reaching the border into the United States without issuing court dates.
“This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us,” a CBP official with knowledge of the plan told Breitbart Texas anonymously because he is not authorized to speak publically on the matter. “We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.”
According to Calvin Moore, communications director for the Congressional Leadership Fund, there will be other members of Congress who follow the lead of Kirkpatrick and Vela.
“House Democrats are on the run because they know their worsening border crisis and socialist policy agenda will cost them their majority,” Moore said. “Expect more Democrats to follow Kirkpatrick and Vela into an early retirement than face defeat in 2022.”
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