Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered sharp criticism of the current border situation and the influx of migrant crossings under the Biden administration, which the president claims is “not a crisis.”
McConnell rebuked the Biden administration's attempt at blaming the former president for the border crisis, and instead placed blame on the amnesty plan proposed by Biden.
"Just six weeks into unified Democratic government, we already have another crisis brewing on our southern border. In January, Customs and Border Protection logged more than 78,000 encounters on our southwest border. More than double the figure from January of 2020," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "We’re not just talking about the fine details of border policy. The big backdrop behind this whole discussion is the sweeping left-wing amnesty plan that the Biden Administration unveiled before they were even sworn in."
The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which is backed by congressional Democrats and the White House, would greenlight an eight-year path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants while undoing many of the restrictions implemented by the Trump administration. Biden’s newly-confirmed Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro Mayorkas, characterizes the border crisis as simply a “challenge.”
"That is absolutely incorrect. And the crisis was created by the administration sending a message to desperate people who want to come here, that 'just hang on, you'll get in sooner or later,'" McConnell said of the Biden administration's reckless immigration policy. "The Mexican government will then become less cooperative. One thing the previous administration did an excellent job of, by any objective standard, was border security. And all of that is being undone very quickly in this new administration. They own this crisis at the border. They created it. And they can stop it if they chose to."
McConnell on Biden admin: “They own this crisis at the border. They created it.”
— Doug Andres (@DougAndres) March 3, 2021
Mayorkas claimed that Biden's administration is working to restore "humanitarian" border policy over "cruelty," but left out that the cages at the border began under the Obama administration.