Rep. Veronica Escobar: El Paso is the New Ellis Island

After weeks of sustained stress from Home and Senate Republicans, governors, Democratic members of Congress, and teams like FAIR, Vice President Kamala Harris lastly determined to make an look on the Southwest border. She visited El Paso, stopping solely briefly for a photograph alternative on the port of entry earlier than assembly with nonprofits and authorized service suppliers.

El Paso’s Democratic congresswoman, Veronica Escobar (TX-16), joined Harris on the airport runway for a press convention. Rep. Escobar cheerfully started by saying, “welcome to my group, to the brand new Ellis Island, to the capital of the border.” Rep. Escobar’s feedback make clear the sentiment that some legislators share: the disaster is just not that so many are coming illegally, however reasonably that they aren’t let in quick sufficient.

Rep. Escobar’s feedback additionally undercut the White Home’s personal narrative surrounding the still-deteriorating state of affairs on the border. In late Might, the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas advised the Home Appropriations Committee that the “border is closed.” Vice President Harris, in her go to to Guatemala, advised potential migrants “I need to be clear to of us on this area who’re pondering of constructing that harmful trek to the United States-Mexico border. Don’t come. Don’t come… and I imagine in the event you come to our border, you can be turned again.”

A fellow Texas member of Congress, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-05), contrasted Harris’ remarks in Guatemala to Rep. Escobar’s declaration on the tarmac, suggesting that Democrats are sending combined messages. It’s a truthful accusation. On the similar time that Secretary Mayorkas and Vice President Harris inform the cameras that the border stays closed, the administration has carried out every part in its energy to roll again Trump-era restrictions that prevented fraudulent asylum seekers and unlawful aliens from getting into america.

They dismantled the profitable safe-third-country asylum agreements with the northern triangle nations, ended the Migrant Safety Protocols, tried to freeze ICE removals, ended Congressionally-appropriated border wall building, and have teed up scores of regulatory motion to make it simpler for asylum-seeking aliens to enter america and set up roots on this nation earlier than they even seem earlier than an immigration choose.

To characterize the El Paso port of entry as the brand new Ellis Island – the place 12 million immigrants handed by means of between 1892 and 1954 – might be probably the most sincere factor that Rep. Escobar might have mentioned. It’s definitely extra sincere than Vice President Harris and DHS Secretary Mayorkas claiming that the border is closed. Rep. Escobar merely made the error of claiming the quiet half out loud – to many politicians, what is occurring on the Southwest border is an efficient factor.