(The Center Square) – President Joe Biden doesn’t want Republican officials interfering with his immigration policies, saying their initiative to send people north from the border is “playing politics” and “un-American.”
Speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala in Washington, D.C., Thursday night, he said, “Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings using them as props. What they are doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American. It’s reckless.”
He didn’t mention any governors by name but made the remarks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent two buses to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Washington, D.C. residence after she made remarks on Sunday that “the border is secure.”
They also came after Abbott bused more than 10,000 people to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago and after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew people who’d illegally entered the U.S. and arrived in Florida to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
“We have a process in place to manage migrants at the border,” Biden said. “We’re working to make sure it’s safe and orderly and humane.
“Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts. It’s long overdue for Senate Republicans to come to the table and provide a pathway for citizens, for dreamers, those in temporary status, farm workers and essential workers. We need to modernize our laws so businesses can get workers they need and families don’t have to wait decades to be brought back together.”
At a news conference on Thursday, DeSantis said, “In Florida, we take what is happening at the southern border seriously. We are not a sanctuary state, and we will gladly facilitate the transport of illegal immigrants to sanctuary jurisdictions.
“Biden would fly people in the middle of the night, dump them all across this country,” he continued. “There was no warning on any of this. And all of those people in D.C. and New York were beating their chests when [Donald] Trump was president, saying they were so proud to be sanctuary jurisdictions. Saying how bad it was to have a secure border.
“The minute even a small fraction of what those border towns deal with every day is brought to their front door, they all of a sudden go berserk and they’re so upset that this is happening. It just shows you, you know, their virtue signaling is a fraud.”
Abbott said on Thursday, “We’re sending migrants to her [VP Harris] backyard to call on the Biden administration to do its job and secure the border.”
Abbott also tweeted a video of a man who was bused to the vice president’s residence who told Fox News, “Everybody believes that the border is open. It’s open because we enter. We come in, free.”
When asked, “It’s open to come in illegally right?” The man responded, “Illegally, yes. Illegally, that’s true. Because we see it on the news that everybody comes in illegally, so we do the same.”
At a recent campaign event, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke said there were “guards from Texas A&M who were on the border … in Zapata, Webb, and Hidalgo counties to go be part of a solution in search of a problem.”
O’Rourke also told MSNBC he would take down the wall being built in Texas after Abbott became the first governor in history to begin building a wall on Texas soil.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Republican governors sending buses and planes north was an “illegal stunt.”
In response, Abbott’s Press Secretary Renae Eze issued a statement saying, “The White House is full of a bunch of hypocrites, led by the Hypocrite-in-Chief who has been flying planeloads of migrants across the country and oftentimes in the cover of night.”