‘If those numbers don’t go down, it’s going to be a very hot summer,’ Cuellar told NR.
Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) is urging President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit the southern border as conditions there continue to deteriorate.
Prominent Democrats, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), have stressed that “we’re on a good path at the border” under the Biden administration. But Cuellar, who told National Review last month that the White House needed “to do more and listen to the border communities,” suggested that the Biden team has not done much to change its approach, despite a record-high surge.
“We don’t just go visit the border, we live at the border. We talk to the NGOs there, we talk to the mayors, the county judges, to the border patrol, to the men and women in blue, green, and other folks, ICE agents also. We understand this very well,” Cuellar told National Review. “I still will encourage them to do more, to reach out to the folks on the border communities and keep talking to them, to make sure that they get a balanced view of what’s happening there at the border itself.”
The Texas border Democrat admits that the situation is “a very complicated issue,” with multiple moving parts. But he also says he talks with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents “pretty frequently,” who tell him they are getting overwhelmed.
“Just yesterday they said ‘hey brother, we’re tired, very tired. Day after day, long days, we’re tired.’ And they see no end in sight,” he said in an interview. “So unless they turn that faucet off, the numbers are going to continue to come in.”
In March alone, CBP detained over 171,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the border, the highest monthly level recorded in the past 15 years. In the Rio Grande Valley, Cuellar says Border Patrol has had to release “almost 15,000 people” without the notice to appear in immigration court.
“Border Patrol says ‘we got to release these people, family units, because we’re short-handed, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the space,’” he explained. “And to me, the administration should not be doing that, because you’re leaving people out on the honor system. So, at the border, they need help there. The Border Patrol folks need help there.”
“They’re there day after day after day and they see what we see there, day after day,” he continued. “In my opinion, they’ve been throwing red flags, I think they want more than just pats on the back and say ‘hey, you’re doing a good job.’ They need help there.”
So far, neither the president nor the vice president have committed to visiting the border.
“Do they need to visit the border at some time? I mean, yes,” Cuellar stated. “What’s appropriate, what time is appropriate? For us, as soon as possible. For them, they’ll have to make that decision.”
Harris, who was tasked by Biden on March 24 to lead the administration’s response to the migrant crisis, has so far focused on overseeing efforts to work with the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to address the root causes, rather than focusing on enforcement at the border itself.
While Cuellar thinks Harris’s work on Central America is important, it’s only one facet of a complex situation. “Yes, you need to focus on those countries. Yes, you need to focus on the border, and yes you need to focus on the outflow, which is HHS office of refugees, and they got to get those shelters as soon as possible.” He also warned that calls for funding would be slow, and likely would not impact things until “next summer.”
A report this week from the Los Angeles Times warned that the vice president’s new role “has diplomatic and political pitfalls — including for Harris’ longer-term ambitions.”
“I’ve dealt with this before and there are some people that are saying, ‘welp, not enough’s been done.’ Other people are saying, ‘you’re doing too much,’” Cuellar said. “It’s a complicated issue that got handed to the vice president, I know that. It’s a very complicated issue.”
He added that Harris has yet to speak with him, but he wants to “be helpful to them in any way.”
“Some of us have traveled to Central America for so many years, I think we know what the root problems are,” he added. “We don’t need to do a dissertation on this, we know what the root problems are: crime, poverty, there’s been droughts in the past, but lately there’s been two hurricanes, looking for better opportunities.”
While reports have suggested that the Biden administration secured commitments from Latin American countries to deploy troops at their own borders to help stem the migration tide, Cuellar said that the Northern Triangle ambassadors told him that the deployments were not the product of any agreement with the Biden administration.
“I’ll say this very gently, but I had dinner, I’ve talked to, and I’ve met personally with the three ambassadors [El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras] there. And as far as they know, there’s no agreements. There’s been conversations,” he revealed. “The representatives of those three countries that I just met with a couple of days ago, and have been talking to for a while, and will continue meeting with them in person next week, they need to reach an agreement. There’s been talks, but there’s no agreements according to them.”
So far, Cuellar said that he’s been in contact with Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Xavier Becerra, and praised him for “doing a good job” on trying to solve the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border with the expansion of shelters. But he urged the White House to finalize the Northern Triangle “short-term” agreements to help “turn off the faucet.”
“I mean, there’s too many people coming in, and the more people you let in, the more they’re gonna come,” he said. “The numbers are still pretty heavy . . . March, April, May, June, are the peak months. So we just did March and we’re in the middle of April, so we need April, May, and June. Traditionally, those are the peak months — it’s not seasonal, but those are the peak months, and so if those numbers don’t go down, it’s going to be a very hot summer.”