Texas governor Rick Perry said that Obama has ignored his warnings and requests for help on the southern border over the years and shown that he lacks an interest in doing anything to address the issue.
Perry told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that he gave the president a “heads up” as early as May 2012 about the growing problem of unaccompanied alien children coming illegally from Central American countries to the U.S., but the administration did not respond to his warnings. Instead, “the message for years and months from this administration” was that immigration law would not be enforced.
“When we asked the president to come this last week, he made a decision not to come,” Perry said, speaking of the president’s decision to attend fundraisers in Texas, while dismissing the idea of visiting the border as a “photo op.”
“Time after time you see a response from this administration that says, ‘You know what, we’re really not that interested in the southern border of the United States,’” Perry said.
Perry also addressed his disagreements with Rand Paul over foreign policy. After Perry wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post Saturday slamming Paul’s “isolationist policies,” Paul responded in a statement to CBS: “How many Americans should send their sons and daughters to die for a foreign country, a nation the Iraqis won’t defend for themselves?”
Asked by Schieffer to respond, Perry said that “the idea that I’m for opening up the gates and sending multiple number of Americans into harm’s way is a bit of a stretch.” He noted that he had served in the military.