EXCLUSIVE — Republicans have no intention of letting up the pressure on President Joe Biden to address the border crisis despite his following through on their call for him to visit the U.S.-Mexico border.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the party will not take its foot off the gas after Biden’s “photo op” visit to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday, warning that the new Congress has plans in place to demand accountability for his handling of the border, as well as implementing a resolution. One House Republican has already filed articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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“Every Republican is committed to — we need to hold the Biden administration accountable, and they are failing this country right now on this issue,” McDaniel said in a phone call with the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “I don’t think we’ve lost any leverage.”
Republicans nationwide are taking different steps to respond to the crisis, including those in the House of Representatives, where leaders have vowed to end the crisis through policy and to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of the border these past two years.
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“We need to tackle it from many different areas. Gov. [Greg] Abbott’s doing it with the resources he has in his state of Texas, but we absolutely need more funding for Border Patrol agents,” McDaniel said. “We need to deter people from coming across our southern border, and we should not be subsidizing cartels or encouraging a $13 billion industry for cartels that are trafficking young kids and putting people’s lives in danger because we refuse to address a crisis at our southern border.”
McDaniel, who is running for a fourth term as the GOP’s leader, was fresh off a visit to the border. She traveled to Hidalgo County, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley over the weekend as Biden and Mayorkas stopped by El Paso for a few hours Sunday.
“It was really informational for me. Hearing the angst that that community’s feeling from the influx of people coming, the strain on resources — but the No. 1 thing that I heard over and over again was this isn’t good for the people who are coming there,” said McDaniel. “There are people being killed. We are finding bodies — babies are being killed on this treacherous journey.”
She met with a variety of local residents who have been affected by the influx of illegal immigrant encounters over the past two years. Residents, including ranchers and landowners, described their experiences of running into groups of people on their land and coming across dead bodies.
As troubling as it has been for landowners, McDaniel said the Border Patrol agents have had it worse.
“One woman gave me a letter from a Border Patrol agent’s wife just talking about how hard it is to find dead children that are the same age as your own floating in the Rio Grande and find body parts,” she said. “And imagine coming home day after day and that’s the trauma your spouse is seeing. And there’s no acknowledgment of it from our government.”
The community members McDaniel visited said they were extremely thankful for the federal law enforcement agents but that the crisis was taking a serious toll on them, with high suicide rates.
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“Just the extreme trauma they’re dealing with,” McDaniel said. “The silence and the lack of action from the Biden administration is creating a huge burden on everybody who was watching it happen right before them and [thinking], ‘How are we not doing anything about this?'”
Biden spent roughly three hours in El Paso on Sunday. He learned how drugs, contraband, and people can be smuggled inside the United States during a stop at a port of entry and briefly met with several Border Patrol officials at the border wall. He also toured a city facility that provides resources for immigrants.
“They need a lot of resources,” Biden said during the visit. “We’re going to get it for them.”
