It is astonishing that failed former President Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are perceived, in some political circles, as strong on border security.
It was this movement that killed Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the Bush/Cheney Administration.
This movement killed Comprehensive Immigration Reform, after bipartisan Senate approval, in the Obama/Biden Administration.
When their leader was in the White House, this movement never put forward a serious bipartisan immigration reform measure.
This movement ignored President Biden’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform measures at the beginning of his Administration.
It was this movement, led by the failed former President himself, that torpedoed a bipartisan-largely Republican-emphasized Border Security bill because it would damage their political prospects.
Time and time again, MAGA Republicans have proven that they do not want to solve border security and immigration reform. They only want the specter of the issue to linger and demagogue the topic to their uninformed base to turn out and vote for them in primaries and general elections.
Trump and MAGA Republicans do not care about the country. They only care about themselves.
That was the point of a Harris for President press call, highlighted by Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Bisbee Mayor Ken Budge, ahead of the failed former President’s visit to Arizona these next few days.
With Donald Trump planning to make a photo-op at the border, both Kelly and Budge called out the failed President’s hypocrisy on border security.
Among Senator Kelly’s remarks:
“Donald Trump is once again heading to Arizona to use the border and our communities for a photo op. He’s coming to Arizona to take a picture. But Arizonans and Americans across the country. They see through this. And they know that there’s only one person who is actually interested in finding some real solutions to solving the issues at our border and that is Vice President Harris. The fact is that the Vice President is the only candidate who has a record of standing up for Arizona border communities and can be trusted to support our communities and fix this broken system. As a district attorney and then an attorney general and a senator now Vice President, Kamala Harris has shown the leadership and the vision that we need to move this country forward.”
“We’ve seen crossings (thanks to a Biden Executive Order) in the state of Arizona now at the border decrease. Just in July. There was a 32 32% decrease in border crossings.”
“Obviously, there’s more work to be done. But Kamla Harris is clearly the person for this job and I mean, I know this and I imagine many of you know, that Donald Trump is not the person to solve this problem. Just several months ago as you all know, we had an opportunity to pass a bipartisan border security bill. And in the Senate, we worked on this with Senate Republicans…Working with the White House including the Vice President. And Vice President Harris, by the way, she led on this issue. So we worked together and it was tough going for a while. And the legislation was strong legislation. It was also fair. And we got really really close. But at the end of the day very unfortunately the former President Donald Trump blew the whole thing up. He told Senate Republicans that they were not allowed to vote for this. And they didn’t walk away from this legislation. They woke up one morning because of what Donald Trump said, and they ran away from it. This is one of the most hypocritical things I’ve seen in my three and a half years on.”
“Donald Trump loves to talk about this issue. He’ll talk about this issue all day. Finally when it came down to do something about it, and he admitted that he did not really want to solve this problem. And he was pretty clear why I mean he said he wanted this for a campaign issue. So he told Senate Republicans that they were not permitted to vote for it...”
“So with President Harris in the White House starting on January 20th of next year, we’re going to come back to this. We’re going to come back together with Republicans… And together With The current Vice President and the future President. We’re going to provide more pay for border patrol...Agents are now making lower wages because of Donald Trump That legislation not only was there more paid for border patrol agents. It was also going to allow us to hire more border patrol agents and also CBP officers. Those Customs and Border Protection officers that are at ports of Entry. This deal was also going to help us build needed facilities to temporarily hold folks and process Asylum claims “
“And then finally, along with some other things but the last one I’ll mention here is that it was going to add more fentanyl detection machines at the border at the ports of entry… And a lot of folks don’t realize this but Donald Trump, he stopped the federal government from buying more fentanyl detection machines. That would have been placed at our border. And you know what that means? That means that more illicit Fentanyl enters our country and when that happens more people die of fentanyl overdose.“
“It’s because he very simply would not allow Senate Republicans to vote for this bipartisan legislation. And it was because again, he wanted to have this as a campaign issue.“
“Donald Trump and JD Vance don’t want real solutions for this issue. They together worked to kill the toughest and fairest border security deal in decades. And it’s left the state of Arizona and other border states left us out to dry.“
“Donald Trump did not fix this the last time he was in office and he doesn’t really want to fix it now. He made that very clear. And voters I think can tell the difference between leaders like Vice President Harris who are fighting for us and people like Donald Trump who never really deliver. They just want to use issues to divide us and hurt our communities and use issues like this to campaign in their next election.“
Among Mayor Budge’s comments:
“As a Mayor, what we need along the border is just common sense when we really look at immigration reform.“
“With Donald Trump, we’ll just have more chaos and chaos just ruins our small town. We don’t need mass deportations. We don’t need families being separated again. All this just causes us chaos. It causes us problems. We don’t get along as well on our crossborder back and forth and it’s just not what we need.”
“I know that Kamala has heard that and I know that she’ll be the person that will start this immigration reform that we can get behind and start having a normal relationship again.”
“I do not want all of my Hispanic (residents) starting to feel like they’re being targeted and this is something that just is not productive at all. And I think the people across the United States understand that we’re all neighbors and we all need to get along.“
“Just trust me and know that when that Border Bill blew up, I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I thought we finally were going to have something that was not a perfect bill nothing’s ever perfect, but it was a great start and it would have started to produce results and unfortunately, Donald Trump just said nope, ‘I want to just stand down here at the border and shake my fist and say a bunch of things’ and then get in his little motorcade and drive back. So that’s not going to do us any good in Cochise County. So I just want to reiterate that the border mayors are problem solvers. We feel your potholes. We pick up your garbage. We feel that Immigration should be a top priority, and I know that Kamala Harris will take that and run with it, and with the help from Senator Kelly and hopefully our new Senator (Ruben Gallego,) who will be back there, we will make this a reality.”
During a question and answer session, Mayor Budge, responding to a question from a journalist from AZ Central on whether Vice President Harris would make a visit to the border like Failed Former President Trump, stated:
“Chatting next to a big metal fence doesn’t really do much. I think coming to the communities and talking with the leaders down here and hearing from them and the public. That’s what really matters and that’s what she (Harris) is hearing through surrogates. I mean just to have your picture taken with a big rusty wall behind you, I don’t think accomplishes anything but I know Vice President Harris does listen to us when we send our messages up and I think that’s the important part.”
It should be noted that Mayor Budge is not the only Arizona border mayor endorsing the Vice President.
The Mayors of Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis have as well.
It is also thanks to President Biden and Vice President Harris, through Executive action after Republicans, at the behest of their Dear Leader/American Duce wannabe, ran away from bipartisan border security, that illegal border crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in four years (lower than the last September of the Trump Administration.)
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