excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
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Everyone knows it "was working under Trump".
The Democratic mayor of Laredo, Texas, slammed President Joe Biden's immigration policy, alleging that his party has no plan to fix the southern border and has abandoned local communities in favor of massive spending proposals for other interest groups.
Mayor Pete Saenz says that for months many of his city's public services have been forced to focus on providing humanitarian aid, medical services, and transportation for thousands of migrants who pass through Laredo. Those are jobs, he says, the federal government should handle—particularly as the Biden administration loosens immigration restrictions. The added threat of COVID-19 has led Saenz to admit reluctantly that former president Donald Trump's policies benefited Laredo residents.
"We need to truly secure the border," Saenz told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview. "It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working."
...
"We're spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn't given priority. Border Patrol isn't being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded," Saenz said. "Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they're not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement generally."
Laredo, which has a population of 260,000, is 95-percent Hispanic, making it one of the least diverse cities in the country. The city's concerns over Democrats' immigration politics challenge the conventional wisdom that strong border policies serve the anxieties of a dwindling white population. Republicans in 2020 doubled their turnout in the county in which Laredo sits, a pattern that continued in districts throughout southern Texas.
Biden's immigration policy, Saenz contends, serves neither Americans nor migrants well. He pointed to the squalid Del Rio bridge under which thousands of Haitian migrants lived and the outbreaks of COVID-19 and other diseases in Laredo as evidence that a de facto open borders policy is far from the humanitarian solution. Instead, he said, the Biden administration should work on processing overseas asylum claims—the principle that guided the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy.
"The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum. I believe in the asylum process. It needs to be followed or changed. If we don't like the way people are attempting to come, we can have them apply remotely or from either the country of origin or some other place that is close to the country of origin," Saenz said. "No person wants to spend their last penny giving it to the cartels, then risking life and limb travel to try and get all the way to the border. And then there's still the uncertainty that they may not even be granted asylum. At some point, they'll be fugitives."
...
freebeacon.com
The Democratic mayor of Laredo, Texas, slammed President Joe Biden's immigration policy, alleging that his party has no plan to fix the southern border and has abandoned local communities in favor of massive spending proposals for other interest groups.
Mayor Pete Saenz says that for months many of his city's public services have been forced to focus on providing humanitarian aid, medical services, and transportation for thousands of migrants who pass through Laredo. Those are jobs, he says, the federal government should handle—particularly as the Biden administration loosens immigration restrictions. The added threat of COVID-19 has led Saenz to admit reluctantly that former president Donald Trump's policies benefited Laredo residents.
"We need to truly secure the border," Saenz told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview. "It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working."
...
"We're spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn't given priority. Border Patrol isn't being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded," Saenz said. "Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they're not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement generally."
Laredo, which has a population of 260,000, is 95-percent Hispanic, making it one of the least diverse cities in the country. The city's concerns over Democrats' immigration politics challenge the conventional wisdom that strong border policies serve the anxieties of a dwindling white population. Republicans in 2020 doubled their turnout in the county in which Laredo sits, a pattern that continued in districts throughout southern Texas.
Biden's immigration policy, Saenz contends, serves neither Americans nor migrants well. He pointed to the squalid Del Rio bridge under which thousands of Haitian migrants lived and the outbreaks of COVID-19 and other diseases in Laredo as evidence that a de facto open borders policy is far from the humanitarian solution. Instead, he said, the Biden administration should work on processing overseas asylum claims—the principle that guided the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy.
"The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum. I believe in the asylum process. It needs to be followed or changed. If we don't like the way people are attempting to come, we can have them apply remotely or from either the country of origin or some other place that is close to the country of origin," Saenz said. "No person wants to spend their last penny giving it to the cartels, then risking life and limb travel to try and get all the way to the border. And then there's still the uncertainty that they may not even be granted asylum. At some point, they'll be fugitives."
...
A Border Town's Democratic Mayor Has Had Enough
The Democratic mayor of Laredo, Texas, slammed President Joe Biden's immigration policy, alleging that his party has no plan to fix the southern border and has abandoned local communities in favor of massive spending proposals for other interest groups.
freebeacon.com
