CV NEWS FEED // A chorus of critics from across the political spectrum have slammed the border crisis still unfolding under the leadership of President Joe Biden.
“The opening of the border and the influx that’s coming in is an existential threat to our country and to our values,” said independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a campaign ad released Monday. The title of the ad was “Stop the Border Crisis.”
The video featured footage of Kennedy visiting the border, which he has done twice. He told a panel of officials in Cochise County, AZ, “I really want to focus today on what your ideas are for how we can stop this [crisis] as quickly as possible.”
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk also drew attention to the intensifying crisis on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter).
“And we are only 6 weeks into 2024!” he wrote Monday in reply to a post showing that the number of migrant encounters grew more than tenfold in just six years.
The post also contained a video clip showing a long line of migrants queuing up near the border.
Last week, Musk accused Biden of intentionally misleading the American people on immigration.
“You are being gaslit,” Musk wrote on X in response to the president claiming the “only reason the border is not secure is [former President] Donald Trump.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-MO, seemed to agree with Musk.
“The only reason the border isn’t secure is because the first day you were in office you reversed every Trump policy that was working,” he wrote on X at the time. “The border is wide open [and] Biden did it intentionally.”
Musk visited the U.S.-Mexico border in September of last year. The Wall Street Journal then reported that he “arrived at the small Texas city of Eagle Pass on Thursday to meet with local politicians and officials about the recent surge in migrants crossing the [border].”
Musk lives in the southeastern corner of Texas where the SpaceX Starbase is located. Tesla is headquartered in the Lone Star State’s capital of Austin. Musk owns both companies, in addition to X.
>> SPEAKER JOHNSON: NO MORE UKRAINE AID UNTIL BORDER IS SECURE <<
Monday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, posted a statement on his X account blasting the Democratic-controlled Senate’s decision to pursue a foreign aid package without any provisions to secure the border of the U.S.
“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was the secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” Johnson wrote:
It is what the American people demand and deserve. Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.
The border crisis has surged under Biden’s presidency. As CatholicVote previously noted:
According to a January 1 FOX News report, “more than 302,000 migrants were documented attempting to cross the U.S. southern border” [in December]. “It is the highest total for a single month ever recorded.” It is also the first time migrant encounters have exceeded 300,000.
“In January 2021, the month [Biden] took office, only 78,414 encounters were recorded,” detailed another CatholicVote report. “Just six months later, the total was 213,593 – almost three times higher.”
>> NEW REPORT: ‘HOW BIDEN BOTCHED THE BORDER’ <<
Axios on Monday morning released an article purporting to provide inside information on the Biden administration’s reaction to the border crisis.
The piece, titled “How Biden Botched the Border,” recounted how the administration deliberately avoided the topic until fairly recently.
“The White House generally didn’t want to talk publicly about immigration or the border for much of Biden’s first three years, feeling it would draw attention to a political vulnerability,” the authors wrote:
White House officials limited and pushed against having Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or other immigration officials appear on TV until a few months ago.
Publicly, the White House also initially downplayed jumps in illegal border crossings as normal “ebbs and flows” — even as some internally pushed to acknowledge that the problem was significant.
