Sen. Hagerty: Biden hiding truth of border crisis, migrant COVID spread
By: Paul Bedard
March 18, 2021
Link here.
The Biden administration today is being urged to “level” with a nation growing anxious about the historic surge of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border and the danger they pose by spreading COVID-19 and taking jobs just as the nation recovers from the pandemic.
“It is time to level with the American people regarding the nature of this crisis,” said Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty in a letter delivered to President Biden this morning and shared with Secrets.
Hagerty said the administration is not being fully transparent or truthful about the crisis. The Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli has reported that the administration has muzzled border officials.
“Your administration has demonstrated a complete lack of transparency regarding this crisis, including failing to provide adequate information concerning the migrants who are entering communities throughout the United States as a result of your policies and repeatedly refusing to even acknowledge that a crisis exists,” he wrote in the sharply-worded letter.
Since Biden took office with promises to dismantle former President Trump’s immigration policies and open the border, over 100,000 migrants have been apprehended and estimates suggest that number could near 1 million this year.
Officials have said that many have COVID-19 but are being released into U.S. cities. The National Sheriffs’ Association said yesterday that up to 50% of the migrants are infected.
What’s more, he said that the policy is contradictory because as Biden opens the border, his administration continues to urge the nation to be careful about opening the economy.
“You criticize American state and local leaders for relaxing pandemic mandates on Americans to allow businesses to open and Americans to return to work, while simultaneously releasing unknown numbers of non-Americans — some of whom are currently COVID-positive — into American communities,” said Hagerty.
It is the second letter about the border crisis that Hagerty has sent Biden. He received no answer from the first.
A new senator, Hagerty is the former aambassador to Japan and serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He initially raised questions about the impact of Biden’s rejection of Trump’s immigration diplomacy with Mexico would have in encouraging migrants to leave holding camps to cross the border.
Now, he said the crisis is all Biden’s. “This is a crisis of your own making,” he wrote.
The letter, shown below, includes 17 questions and issues he wants addressed. Key among them:
- How many border officials have been infected with COVID-19 by illegal migrants?
- What is the count of border crossings?
- Are illegal criminals in the country being arrested and deported.
And, in a question asked repeatedly of Homeland Security officials and unanswered so far, he asked, “Is the situation on the border an emergency?”