Texas Dem Sounds Alarm on Pending Biden Immigration Crisis: ‘The Impression Is That the Border’s Open’

In 2014, it was south Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar’s border contacts that led to a national crisis for the Obama White House.

Cuellar sent pictures to the Houston Chronicle that he had received showing a Customs and Border Protection facility crowded with not just men, but also women and young children — to drive home the stark reality that a surge in illegal border crossings was being driven by families and unaccompanied minors. The subsequent story took the country by storm and helped spur the Obama administration into action.

“I had to release those pictures, because they were keeping it very, very quiet,” Cuellar told National Review. Now, seven years later, Cuellar suggests a similar dynamic is emerging under Obama’s former vice president Joe Biden.

“I’m a Democrat, and I support this administration. I supported the Obama administration. But sometimes I think they need to do more and listen to the border communities,” he said.

According to multiple reports, the Biden administration is facing an impending border crisis. “We’re seeing the highest February numbers than we’ve ever seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program,” a Department of Health and Human Services official told Axios last week, while the Wall Street Journal reported that the February number is expected to be 9,000 — up 50 percent from January and 68 percent higher than December.

So far, the Biden team has stressed that the situation is not a crisis, even as the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly projecting 117,000 border crossings by unaccompanied minors this year – 45 percent higher than the all-time record.

“We are not saying don’t come. We are saying don’t come now, because we will be able to provide a safe and orderly process to them” DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a White House press conference on Monday.

For Cuellar, who has cautioned fellow Democrats against “let everybody in” rhetoric, such appeals will only fall on deaf ears.

“With all due respect, the drug or the criminal organizations are not going to do that. They’re not going to listen,” he said in an interview. “. . . And even though they say, ‘we’re not opening the border,’ the impression is that the border’s open.”

The Blue Dog Democrat, who has held office since 2005, explained that breaking down the surge geographically already shows how criminal enterprises are ramping up their operations.

“For example, why is it that in the Del Rio sector, you have a lot of Cubans and Haitians coming in? That in the Laredo sector, as of a week ago, 73 percent were Mexican single adults? Then in the [Rio Grande] Valley, a great part of them are family units or unaccompanied kids, a lot of them from Central America,” he remarked. “So why is it that the different folks go to different sectors? By accident? No, it’s by design.”

Cuellar agreed with the administration’s characterization of the border situation — “I wouldn’t call what’s happening right now our crisis yet. Yet,” he stated — and said that even though “they haven’t really communicated the way I wish they would,” he would give them the benefit of the doubt for now. But Cuellar said he has yet to speak to Mayorkas, and has had trouble getting the White House to act on his concerns.

He pointed to the reality that Border Patrol does not check detainees for COVID, while restrictions on millions of border-visa holders — who bring in billions of dollars in business — remain in place, creating a “double whammy” that is frustrating his constituents.

“I talked to somebody at the White House several times, but one time I was bringing this up, and they said, ‘but Congressman, we had a phone call with Sister Norma [executive director of Catholic Charities of the Valley] to let her know that the people are coming,’” he explained.  “And I’m here like, ‘okay, that doesn’t solve the key issue of who’s testing this people, who’s helping the NGOs.’ So they’re putting the burden on the NGOs and the local communities. And on top of that, they’re not letting the legal visa holders, which are the ones that support our local communities, from coming across.”

Cuellar’s main frustration is the perception that the Biden administration is “only listening to the activists” at the expense of border communities.

“It’s okay to listen to the immigration activists and advocates,” he explained. “But the other side of the formula is to listen to the border communities. And you’ve got to balance your approach, when you listen to both sides, and not just the immigrant activists, that many times live thousands of miles away from the border.”

Cuellar’s worries are shared by other south Texas Democrats, as the Biden administration has seen a spike in asylum seekers after ending the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocol, or “Remain in Mexico” policy. Cuellar said that it was a mistake to revoke the “Remain in Mexico policy,” which kept asylum seekers — who face rejection rates of 70 percent — from entering the country before their case is heard.

“If you try to evade, Border Patrol will get to and return you. But if you are just coming in to claim asylum, not even the wall is going to stop you,” he elaborated. “You can have all the Border Patrol there, but they’re not going to be evading Border Patrol, they’re going to be coming in. Right now, the bad guys are dropping off large groups of unaccompanied kids at the border, they’re just dropping them off at the riverbank and saying, ‘there, go on, find somebody in green, and just go out there.’ So notice what the bad guys are doing.”

He also warned that the Trump-era Title 42 public health order, which allowed officials to quickly expel migrant adults and families during the pandemic, could soon be on the chopping block.

“Once we start getting herd immunity, they’re going to get rid of that. And then what do you have after that? I mean, what do you have?” Cuellar said.

Over the last four years, Cuellar opposed legislation backed by the Trump administration 60 percent of the time. And even as he held off a prominent progressive challenger and won his race in November by 20 points, Cuellar said that fears over Biden’s border policy played a role in a surprising south-Texas shift to Trump.

“I traveled the district two days afterwards, I went up and down and asked people why they voted in a particular way,” he recalled. “There were two issues. One is ‘defund the police.’ So if you were a border patrol agent, — and there’s a lot of border patrol agents down there, deputies, and police — that was not good. The oil and gas is another one. And the other thing is border security, making it sound that Trump was strong on border security. He equated the wall toward border security — I’m against a wall, but I still consider myself strong on border security. But was that part of it? Yes.”