‘Defunding Law Enforcement Generally’: Texas Mayor Slams Democrats Over Border Crisis
© REUTERS / Jose Luis Gonzalez
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The Biden administration has significantly changed border regulations, reversing some of the restrictive measures for immigrants introduced by former President Donald Trump. Among the cancelled measures are the continued construction of the US-Mexico border wall and the ban on unaccompanied migrant children entering the country.
The Trump-era's strict border policies produced results, while the actions undertaken by the current US administration have let the situation get out of hand, Pete Saenz, Democratic Mayor of Laredo, Texas, told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday.
Claiming that the border “heeds to be fully secured,” he noted that he hasn’t seen any measures from the federal government “to remedy this.” Saenz stressed that local public services need financial aid, as they spend a lot of money on assisting and deporting immigrants.
Some policies implemented by the previous administration, according to the mayor, had been helpful, including the Remain in Mexico program.
"The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum," Saenz claimed. "I believe in the asylum process. It needs to be followed or changed. If we don't like the way people are attempting to come, we can have them apply remotely or from either the country of origin or some other place that is close to the country of origin."
"No person wants to spend their last penny giving it to the cartels, then risking life and limb to travel to try and get all the way to the border," he added. "And then there's still the uncertainty that they may not even be granted asylum. At some point, they'll be fugitives."
Saenz also noted that the border needs a wall, either physical or virtual, that would "deter or at least buy time, so to speak, for law enforcement." Otherwise, he stressed, “people here will be begging for a wall, a physical structure, simply because of his lack of attention to the border and especially the size of these surges.”
"We're spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn't given priority. Border Patrol isn't being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded," he noted. "Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they're not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement generally."
As the situation at the border has intensified again in recent weeks, the Biden administration announced earlier this week that it would rescind another law imposed by Donald Trump, the “Migrant Protection Protocols.” The abolition of the program, which encouraged migrants to stay in Mexico while a decision was pending on their application, was earlier dismissed by the US federal court in Texas.
