Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the migrant situation at the border “not a crisis,” but a “full-blown disaster” on Wednesday.
Five hundred additional National Guard troops will be sent to the southern border of Texas, amounting to nearly 1,000 Department of Public Safety troopers sent to the border for mitigating the 1,000 to 4,000 migrants who are crossing the border every day, Patrick announced.
“We’ve already arrested nearly 1,000 criminals in the first two months of the year, just to protect the sector. It is absolute disaster and President Biden is nothing more than a prop of the Left — he has no idea what’s going on down there,” Patrick said on Fox News.
Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain said in January that the administration “inherited a huge mess” from the Trump administration, saying that “we have a plan to fix it.”
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“We are committed to a policy that follows the rule of law and that is humane, and we are doing our best to surge capacity at the border for these children who arrive here without parents to house them in a way that’s safe,” he told Punchbowl News.
The White House signaled in February that Customs and Border Protection would expand capacity for an additional tent facility to house immigrants coming across the border near Eagle Pass, Texas.
Patrick hit back against Klain’s statement, saying, “They must have legalized marijuana, the White House, and they’re all smoking it because these people are clueless.”
The lieutenant governor advocated for legal immigration, as opposed to the plan allowing migrants to seek asylum on U.S. soil, asking how young migrants could adapt.
“What do you do with this 14- or 15-year-old kid who comes across the border illegally, is sent to some city, put in the school system? He’s two or three grade levels behind, at best — you can’t put a 15-year-old with a fourth-grade class,” Patrick said.
The protocols for handling migrants would lead to more school dropouts if the rate of migrants continues, Patrick said, adding that he believes millions of migrants could cross the border in 2021.
In the first few weeks of the Biden presidency, the president moved to overturn the Trump administration’s policies and began working toward immigration reform legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for most immigrants who reside in the U.S. illegally.
CBP data from fiscal year 2021, which began in October 2020, showed 296,000 migrants crossed the border since January. Figures from the same timeframe in 2020 showed 165,000 migrant encounters.
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The agency has not released data reports from February, though reports indicate 100,000 migrants were detained at the border that month.
