Breitbart Texas’s reporting on the illegal immigrant children who were being warehoused along the U.S.-Mexico border and Dave Brat’s primary victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) made Congress and President Barack Obama give up on amnesty legislation this year, according to a recent piece in Politico.
Those “two unforeseen events killed any remaining chance for action” on an amnesty bill, Politico concluded.
As a result, Obama on Monday announced he would try to change as many immigration laws as he can on his own after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who had reportedly said that he was hell-bent on passing amnesty this year, informed him that there would not be an immigration vote this year.
Two days after Cantor’s primary, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) was reportedly ready to announce to House leaders that a majority of House Republicans supported his immigration reform bill.
Politico reported that “as recently as this month… there was more movement in the House than previously known” as Diaz-Balart had been “quietly shopping a PowerPoint presentation of a border enforcement and legalization bill to his colleagues and secured soft commitments from at least 120 Republicans.” According to Politico, Diaz-Balart “wanted a week to firm up the numbers and a commitment to bring it to the floor.” He never got that chance, though.
First, the mainstream media started to cover the “young children from Central America crossed illegally over the southwestern border in record numbers” only after Breitbart Texas published photos of migrant children in detention centers. Then Cantor lost his primary because of his support for amnesty, especially for illegal immigrant children.
Breitbart News Senior Editor Joel Pollak detailed how Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby’s reporting was monumental in making the border crisis a national priority, which played a role in toppling Cantor. National Border Patrol Council Vice President Shawn Moran said on Fox News that he could not get the media and politicians to pay attention to the story before Darby published the leaked photos on Breitbart Texas. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin also praised Darby for forcing the political class to care about the crisis.
“We tried to tell people about this story months ago, and until Brandon Darby put up pictures on Breitbart Texas, nobody seemed interested,” Moran said. “This is something that’s been going on for over a year and is just getting worse. And the American public needs to see what is going on. They need to see how hard our agents are working and how helpless they are to stop this and to make this situation better.”
A post-election poll found that Cantor was ousted because of the immigration issue and Tea Party opposition.
As Breitbart News reported, the “Silver Bullet survey found that 52% of primary voters said that Cantor’s position on immigration was either the ‘main reason’ they voted for his opponent David Brat or had a ‘significant part’ in influencing their vote.” Further, “Tea Party voters, who made up 55% of the electorate, powered Dave Brat to the shocking upset,” as Brat “won 71% of Tea Party voters while losing among ‘those who oppose the Tea Party or who have no opinion about it.'”
House leaders got the message, and Obama said on Monday that he would enact executive actions because Congress would not give him the legislation he desired.
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