“Talk to the DHS.” That’s what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters after being questioned recently if Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials were being told not to talk to the press.
It was reported earlier that senior CBP officials were told to stop communicating with the media outside of approved messaging and statements from Washington. “Ride-alongs,” where reporters travel to the border with a CBP agent – and were common under President Trump – have also been halted. This reporting led to numerous outlets asking Psaki if this de facto “gag order” had come directly from the White House or senior DHS leadership.
Psaki tried stressing the Biden Administration’s transparency, but this claim rang hollow because she immediately redirected reporters to DHS – the very department being muzzled. It’s pretty obvious the Biden White House doesn’t want to take responsibility for its irresponsible and damaging immigration policy or allow anyone to openly question it.
The contentious briefing came on the heels of a House Homeland Security Committee hearing where Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeatedly insisted that there was no crisis at the border – despite attempted border crossings reaching a two-decade high.
Additionally, Mayorkas revealed that not all migrants being let into the country are being COVID tested and that terrorists are trying to capitalize on the border chaos to infiltrate our country. How he could admit this while continuing to deny the reality of the catastrophe at the border is astonishing.
The situation on the ground has become so dire that a senior Biden customs official contradicted administration talking points by saying, “the president understands it is a crisis which is why he told migrants ‘don’t come over.’” Even Psaki herself appeared to slip on Thursday and inadvertently refer to the state of affairs at the border as a crisis.
And that’s not the only contradiction emerging as the Biden White House struggles to define its policy and get its story straight. In a March 16th statement from DHS, Secretary Mayorkas affirmed the Biden Administration’s stance that only unaccompanied minors are being allowed across the border into these facilities, while single adults and families are being sent back under the CDC’s Title 42 authority.
However, at Thursday’s White House press briefing, NBC News’ Peter Alexander questioned if this policy was still the case, because reporters down on the border have seen families being admitted across the border. Psaki responded that there were a “very limited” number of families being admitted and directed questions about the numbers of migrants being allowed into the country to CBP. These repeated contradictions and excuses are painting an unflattering portrait of incompetence.
It appears that neither President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, nor Secretary Mayorkas have any plans to visit the border – perhaps hoping that if they ignore it, the crisis will simply go away. But as communities on the border can testify, it’s only getting worse.
At the same time as the congressional hearing in Washington, Texas Governor Greg Abbott held a press conference in Dallas outlining a starkly different reality than the one the Biden Administration is trying to spin from inside the Beltway. CBP reports seeing 565 unaccompanied minors crossing the border every single day – up from 313 per day just last month. With President Biden insisting he’ll accept unaccompanied minors and not turn them away, he’s incentivizing parents to send their children on dangerous journeys with coyotes and human traffickers.
At his presser, Governor Abbott called this increase in minors arriving at the border a “humanitarian crisis,” and requested that the Biden Administration give Texas law enforcement officers access to the migrant children to investigate human traffickers.
So, where’s our Commander-In-Chief in all of this? He’s on a self-congratulatory “Help is Here” tour, visiting cities across the country (but far from the border) to tout his $1.9 trillion so-called COVID “relief” bill. It seems that Biden’s approach to the escalating and self-inflicted crisis is to deny reality and hope that the country gets distracted by his big government spending spree. But for those living on the southern border, help is nowhere to be found. If Biden is truly interested in restoring unity – as he often proclaims – here’s an easy way.
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Alejandro Mayorkas should get their heads out of the sand, visit the border and meet with border state governors and officials to hear the truth. A trip to the border would make it clear to them – and what most Americans plainly see – that they have a crisis on their hands.
If this border crisis had been created by a new Republican president, the mainstream media would be pushing the narrative that no other items on the administration’s legislative agenda should move forward until the situation at the border is under control. And in this case, the media would be 100 percent right.
How can Biden and Harris prioritize infrastructure spending, tax increases, gun control, and election reform as the border spirals out of control? It doesn’t make sense. In fact, it’s a dereliction of duty.