Biden slammed by fellow Democrat for not fixing the border crisis
Anna Giaritelli
An outspoken House Democrat from a southern border district harshly criticized President Joe Biden for refusing to visit the worsening crisis at the border.
“I don’t know why they keep avoiding the border and saying there’s other things more important than visiting the border,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in an interview with CNN Wednesday, adding that Biden should “absolutely” visit El Paso, Texas, where thousands of immigrants are being taken into custody daily for illegally entering the United States.
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“If there’s a crisis, show up. Just show up. Just showing up at the border would send a strong signal to the communities that he’s there — he cares about the border communities. Just show up. It doesn’t take much to just show up at the border,” the Democrat from Texas said.
Cuellar’s condemnation comes after Biden said he did not visit the U.S.-Mexico border while he was in Arizona last week because there were “more important things.”
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Asked if the Biden administration ought to limit the number of immigrants who can make claims of asylum at the border, Cuellar said that response would fail to resolve the underlying problem: 1.9 million immigration cases waiting to be heard by a mere 500 immigration judges.
“If you put 100 [asylum-seekers] in front of an immigration judge, 88 to 90% are going to be rejected,” Cuellar said. “Why is the U.S. the only place that they can get away from persecution? There’s a lot of countries on the way over here that they can ask that, or they can do it in an orderly process. Ask for asylum in one of our consulates or embassies abroad.”
Over the past week, El Paso agents have had a daily average of 2,400 encounters with illegal immigrants. El Paso is but one city on the 2,000-mile southern border. Cuellar said the situation in El Paso, where the number of immigrants encountered continues to rise, is unsustainable and unacceptable.
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“What you see in El Paso or what you saw an Eagle Pass, Del Rio, what you see in the valley — I don’t call that orderly, and I don’t understand why the administration doesn’t understand that,” said Cuellar. “I want to be constructive. I want to work with them to address this issue.”
Cuellar won a 10th term as the representative for Texas’s 15th Congressional District, located between the lower Rio Grande Valley and Big Bend National Park.