After Texas Governor Rick Perry demanded a “substantial meeting” with President Barack Obama this week over the border crisis, Obama had his top confidante, Valerie Jarrett, respond by inviting Perry to a Wednesday meeting with him in Texas.
According to CNN, Jarrett, in a Tuesday letter to Perry, wrote that Obama would “welcome” a meeting with Perry and “asked me to invite you to join him for a meeting to discuss the situation on the border with faith leaders and local elected officials in Dallas on Wednesday.”
Jarrett also “asked Perry for his help in convincing Republicans in Congress to approve the President’s request for more than $2 billion in federal funds to add new border patrol agents and immigration judges in the Southwestern region, as well as expanded facilities to hold detained migrants.”
Perry has accused Obama of being “inept,” not caring about the border, or having an “ulterior motive” in allowing illegal immigrants to flood across it. Perry, who has demanded that the Obama administration use better diplomacy to persuade Mexico to secure its southern border with Guatemala, has also said that the border has never been less secure, and gangsters and terrorists are looking to exploit that to do harm to Americans.
“I appreciate the offer to greet you at Austin-Bergstrom Airport, but a quick handshake on the tarmac will not allow for a thoughtful discussion regarding the humanitarian and national security crises enveloping the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas,” Perry wrote Obama. “I would instead offer to meet with you at any time during your visit to Texas for a substantive meeting to discuss this critical issue. With the appropriate notice, I am willing to change my schedule to facilitate this request.”
Perry said that at “any point while you are here, I am available to sit down privately so we can talk and you may directly gain my state’s perspective on the effects of an unsecured border and what is necessary to make it secure.”
Obama will also attend three fundraisers for Democrats on Wednesday and Thursday in Texas, but he will not visit the border.
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