With the illegal immigration issue being one of the top issues that concern Americans going into the 2024 presidential election, Republicans continue to focus on the past and current immigration missteps the Biden administration has made since taking office, missteps that have created the “Biden Border Crisis" by abandoning border policies former President Donald Trump implemented during his first term in office.
Many media outlets have tried to dismiss the Republican narrative that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was never tapped as the “Border Czar” by President Joe Biden.
President Biden never specifically called her the “Border Czar,” but according to Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R), VP Harris is the “Border Czar” even though the “White House document” he references “doesn’t use the word Border Scar but it puts her in charge very clearly as the head executive of Immigration and border policy.”
The document Rep. Crenshaw is referring to is the transcription of a meeting on immigration that President Biden had with Vice President Harris on March 24, 2021.
"In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” reads the transcript.
In an exclusive interview with Texas Politics, Rep. Crenshaw, the former wounded Navy Seal reaffirmed his support for, and belief that the Trump-era immigration policies like the “Remain in Mexico” directed worked, but warned that those policies were heavily reliant on cooperation from the country of Mexico and other allies.
“Those policies are working the only problem with those policies is they're they're totally reliant on other countries for enforcement,” said Rep. Crenshaw.
While he supports the edict, Crenshaw calls the recent immigration executive order President Biden penned as being a “cynical” in hopes to gain lost ground over the issue of illegal immigration,” saying that the” measures on the border” were “purely because of a November elections —it has nothing to do with their actual belief system or ideology.”
“It's purely cynical politics. He's only doing it because he realized what a bad issue was for them, so I'm glad they realized that like I and I don't, I have no problem with it but if Kammala Harris wins again, I see no evidence that she would maintain those policies and maintain enforcement,” Crenshaw added.
President Donald Trump and many Republican lawmakers support a “mass deportation” of illegal aliens across the country.
When asked if he supported deporting illegal aliens at a mas scale, Crenshaw appears to support mass deportation, but doesn’t believe a future Trump administration would actually go around and round up individiuals.
Crenshaw believes that a Trump “mass deportation” initiative would probably look like a significant crack down on “sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary states,” adding that he expects the Trump administration to “reboot normal deportation which should be in the 100 thousands.”
During the 2023 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, President Trump stated that if elected, he would conduct “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”
Kamala Harris is on record of wanting to give illegal immigrants government healthcare, and wanting to decriminalize illicit border crossings.
