Seven prominent Democrats turn on Biden over soft border policies: ‘federal crisis of inaction’
A growing number of Democrats have turned on President Biden over his policies at the southern border, as the continuing migrant crisis brings chaos to cities across the country.
From Massachusetts to Arizona, The Post has noted seven prominent liberal politicians and one independent officeholder who say the president needs to do more to stem the flow of migrants to American cities.
Most recently, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said her state has taken charge while the federal government has been missing in action, as she declared a state of emergency last week over the migrant crisis in her state.
“Massachusetts has stepped up to address what sadly has been a federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making,” she said in her letter to the feds.
With nearly 5,600 migrant families — more than 20,000 individuals — currently in state shelter, including children and pregnant women, Healey also demanded the Biden administration pay for the expenses.
A Chicago politico challenged Biden to tour overrun migrant camps in the city, which The Post reported as one of the top five destinations in the US for migrants last week.
“I invite you to see firsthand what we are forced to do while waiting for [US Citizenship and Immigration Services] to take the steps necessary to move the needle on this crisis,” wrote Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez in an open letter to the commander-in-chief last month.
“This facility, along with the 11 shelters offering semi-permanent housing to the migrants and asylum-seekers, are pushing our city to the brink unnecessarily because of the lax response from [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas and USCIS Director [Ur] Jaddou.”
“They were ignoring this crisis that’s been going since Joe Biden took office,” according to Republican National Congressional Committee spokeswoman Savannah Viar, who pushed back during a phone interview Monday.
“In Joe Biden’s America, every state is a border state. Now that their backyards have become the border because this crisis has gotten so out of hand under the Democrats, they’re now acting like they always supported securing the border.”
Viar blamed New York City’s and Massachusetts’ own liberal laws requiring that they provide shelter to migrants for exacerbating the border crisis and said they must point the finger at themselves.
“They invited this into their own backyard by creating sanctuary cities so now, they need to put up,” she said.
“Now [sanctuary cities] are experiencing what the southern border cities, like El Paso, [Texas,] have been seeing for years now.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams went from saying he would welcome migrants with “open arms” a year ago to claiming the federal government “turned its back” on the Big Apple as it grapples with a humanitarian crisis that could cost taxpayers $12 billion.
“There is reason to hope that the plight of sanctuary mayors will put pressure on President Biden,” Eric Ruark, director of research at NumbersUSA, told The Post.
“When a Republican speaks out, whether a mayor or a member of Congress, the response from the Biden administration usually is, ‘They don’t understand what’s going on,’ or ‘They’re against immigration reform.'”
Adams’ insistence that the federal government pick up the tab for the migrants has resulted in a meeting with top presidential aide Tom Perez last week.
US Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) also blasted the president’s “dumb” border policies, according to NBC.
The Grand Canyon State’s governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, and Rep. Ruben Gallegos (D-Ariz.) have also been critical of Biden’s border policies in the recent months, according to the Washington Post, asking the president to send more help as Arizona sees a huge surge in illegal border crossers.
In the Tucson region, the US Border Patrol has been encountering up to 1,900 migrants a day, more than double the number who were crossing in June, agency statistics reflect.
“D.C. has shown little regard for the actual crisis that’s occurring in Arizona,” said US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), slamming the Biden administration in May.
“We’ve paid the price for the federal government’s failure to fix our broken immigration system for most of my lifetime.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination for president, has also criticized the incumbent.
“We should have closed the border,” the political challenger said.
Additionally, Biden has received criticism from other Democrats who believe his border security policies have gone too far and are keeping too many asylum seekers out.
In January, more than 70 liberal officeholders sent the president a letter criticizing his administration’s policies restricting asylum access for migrants crossing the southern border, reported NBC News.
The Democratic National Committee and Lopez did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
