EL PASO, Texas — Texas Republican lawmakers who represent districts on the Mexican border were furious that the White House chose to exclude them from President Joe Biden’s visit despite inviting three Democrats along for the trip.
Reps. Tony Gonzales and Monica De La Cruz told the Washington Examiner that they had not been asked or allowed to join Biden on his first trip to the southern border Sunday afternoon.
For Gonzales, whose district includes 800 miles of the 2,000-mile southern border as well as part of El Paso, it was a real jab.
“Seven months ago, I hosted the president in Uvalde, and I asked him to visit on the border. He looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Tony, yes,'” Gonzales told CBS News Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan Sunday about a conversation during Biden’s visit following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
INSIDE FOUR LOCATIONS OF EL PASO’S BORDER CRISIS THAT JOE BIDEN WILL BYPASS
“Seven months later, when I tried to be part of this El Paso visit … the White House told me I wasn’t, I wasn’t able to be part of it,” said Gonzales, who added that he did not know why they had barred him.
“I’m not this crazy extremist Republican,” he said.
GOP Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales said he doesn’t know why the White House wouldn’t allow him to accompany Biden on his trip to El Paso: “I’m not this crazy, extremist Republican.”
“The administration just has turned a blind eye” to what’s happening at the border, he added. pic.twitter.com/Lw7HUvslaH
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) January 8, 2023
De La Cruz, who won her first term in Congress two months ago, said she urged Biden in December to visit the border but that even though he was doing so now, his immigration policies were incoherent.
“On one hand, the president likens migrants from Cuba and Nicaragua to Holocaust refugees while, simultaneously, his State Department is enriching the socialist dictatorships they are fleeing,” De La Cruz wrote in a statement.
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“I hope the Biden White House does not treat this visit as merely a photo op and that it reverses course on the failed policies that led to this crisis,” De La Cruz said. “We need a long-term solution that includes enhancing our border security, working with our Latin American partners to provide safe alternatives for migrants, ending the ‘catch and release’ program, and holding the cartels accountable for their crimes against Americans.”
Biden spent roughly three hours in El Paso Sunday ahead of a planned trip to Mexico. He stopped at the Bridge of the Americas port of entry, visited with border agents at a section of the border wall, and spent time at a migrant center. “They need a lot of resources,” Biden said in pledging more help. “We’re going to get it for them.”
The one Republican the White House did invite was Gov. Greg Abbott, who handed Biden a letter as he stepped off Air Force One in El Paso, blasting his “failure to enforce the immigration laws.”
