During an interview on Huntsville, AL radio’s WVNN on Monday, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, voiced his skepticism over his Democratic congressional colleagues wanting to find a solution to the turmoil at the United States-Mexico border.
Rogers speculated Democrats want the problem to persist so they could blame President Donald Trump and court the Hispanic vote.
“Unfortunately, they’re using this as a political football,” Rogers said on “The Jeff Poor Show.” “Initially earlier this year, they were in denial. There’s no crisis. It’s manufactured. Trump made this up. Now, the evidence is so overwhelming. The news organizations have been covering it finally. Even The New York Times came out and editorialized yesterday that the Democrats need to stop playing games, this is a crisis, and they need to provide some relief. The Republicans offer really not is unreasonable. To get The New York Times to acknowledge that is a huge lift. Initially, they were just in denial – saying it is not happening. Now they’re saying, ‘Well, there’s a problem down there. But it’s Trump’s fault.’ It is not Trump’s fault that we don’t have enough border patrol agents, that we don’t have enough health care professionals, that we don’t have enough facilities to house these people, that HHS is literally going to run out of money next month – if they don’t get a supplemental, they are going to run out.”
“So, they are HHS, Health and Human Services, which takes these people, has already gone into government shutdown mode,” he continued. “They are just offering the bare essentials right now because they have less than a month’s money left. And the Democrats are crying foul that they’re doing that. Well, if there is no relief in sight – we’ve asked, the president has to have four-and-a-half billion dollar – I introduced the bill for him in the House – they’ve voted it down three times. I think they’re wanting to see this situation exploited so they can continue to say it is Donald Trump’s fault that these Hispanics, these South Americans or these Central Americans are in these terrible conditions to try and win political points with the Hispanic voting population in this country. That’s what I think.”
The Alabama Republican also warned of “bad actors” among the some of the large groups moving through Mexico and toward the southern border, including MS-13 gang members.
“As the groups have gotten larger, we have detected bad actors, MS-13 gang members in particular, but also some other bad actors that are trying to get in the middle of these large groups, whether it is a 500 person group or 1,000 or 3,000,” he said. “That’s when we’re more apt to see that kind of shenanigans going on. But the border patrol folks have been really doing a good job, a diligent job of policing that. And that’s one of the things that we asked Mexico – the president negotiated with Mexico, to help us with – to cut off some of the money, bank accounts, freeze the accounts of some of these bad actors were exploiting these groups to try to get in. We’ll see if they really carry out what they said they would do because they said they would.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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