Former Rep. Lou Barletta (R), now running for governor of Pennsylvania, says he too will consider plans to bus illegal aliens out of the state to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware.
Barletta, once the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, told Breitbart News Saturday that he will take similar action to that of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in Florida, who last week announced six proposals and an emergency order to take on companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) aiding in illegal immigration.
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“We’re not going to be accepting illegal aliens from the border,” Barletta said.
“They’re shutting down businesses, making you take a vaccine that you don’t want, putting masks on your kids all day long, and yet they’re letting people come in from the border and shipping them to Pennsylvania and other states with no idea with what their health conditions are,” Barletta continued. “That all comes to an end [when I’m governor].”
DeSantis’s order bans the issuance or renewal of all state licenses to Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) facilities that provide services to Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) who are resettled by the federal government across states.
In addition, DeSantis’s legislative agenda includes plans to financially cripple NGOs that facilitate the process of UAC resettlement. DeSantis has said he wants $8 million to transport illegal aliens from Florida to Biden’s Delaware and Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Obama resides.
Barletta said his state’s proximity to Delaware will make the transportation of illegal aliens out of Pennsylvania even more cost-effective than it is for Florida.
“Gov. DeSantis is doing a great job in Florida … yes, I would take the same steps that Gov. DeSantis did,” Barletta said.
“Pennsylvania is a lot closer to Delaware, so busing those folks to Delaware will cost us a lot less than it’s costing [DeSantis] to ship people from Florida … it’s not a long ride from Philadelphia to Wilmington,” Barletta continued. “That’s exactly what we have to do.”
Since October 2020, the federal government has resettled more than 2,300 UACs across the state of Pennsylvania. In October, alone, the Biden administration sent nearly 240 UACs to Pennsylvania.
For more than a decade, Barletta has been on the front lines of the immigration issue — where hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enter the United States every year as the federal government works with companies to inflate the nation’s labor market via massive levels of legal immigration.
As mayor of Hazleton, in 2006, Barletta passed one of the first city-wide ordinances of its kind that fined landlords for knowingly renting to illegal aliens and required businesses to use E-Verify to ensure that illegal aliens were not taking local jobs from American citizens and legal immigrants.
“We need to know the background of people, we need to know their criminal background, we need to know their health background,” Barletta said. “I’m going to stand up for the people of Pennsylvania just like I did for the people of Hazleton.”
“One of the things I did in Hazleton was to stop the business permits of people who were hiring illegal workers at the expense of our own workers,” Barletta continued. “There are tools that I will use that others have not and we’re going to put an end to this nonsense.”
Barletta said it will be his job as governor of Pennsylvania to defend the American victims of illegal immigration.
“Who is standing up for all the victims of these crimes that should not have happened? And as a governor, how can you just sit back and let it happen? It’s disgraceful what’s happening here in Pennsylvania,” Barletta said.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.