Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Democrats get in the way of fixing the border
Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw calls out the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis on 'The Story.'
As Vice President Kamala Harris' endeavor to solve the "root causes" of the border crisis, one Texas Republican congressman told Fox News that Democrats at best pay lip service to the illegal immigrant deluge, while arguing that those who blame Republicans are lying.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw of suburban Houston told "The Story" Thursday it is frustrating to watch the Biden administration take actions to stop local and state officials from securing the border while they seem to do nothing.
He pointed to a legal complaint from the Justice Department claiming Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's installation of shipping containers as a makeshift border wall lacks proper permitting and is "damaging the United States."
"So it seems that if the Biden administration is upset about the governor of one of our states putting shipping containers on federal land, you would also think that the president would be upset about an infringement on federal land in general, say, at our international borders," Crenshaw said.
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US Representative Dan Crenshaw (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
"So they go through all this effort to attack a fellow American, Governor Ducey of Arizona because he's actually building a wall in his state. They go through all this effort to dismantle this and stop this effort, but they go through they put no effort into actually preventing illegal immigration [or] disincentivizing it."
Crenshaw noted Arizona lacks a water border with Mexico, making illegal immigration even easier than it has been shown to be in his own state.
Anchor Martha MacCallum asked Crenshaw about Harris' task of identifying and solving the "root causes" of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, going on to quote the vice president as claiming Republicans in Congress are showing an "unwillingness to engage in any meaningful reform that could actually fix a lot of what we're witnessing."
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Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
Crenshaw rejected Harris' argument, calling it infuriating and comparing those remarks to those of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whom he said has claimed Republicans holding public events at the border are engaging in grandstanding.
"It's just a flat-out lie," he said. "I personally – just my legislation alone would fix this problem. The Texas delegation, we put forth an entire plan made up of dozens of pieces of legislation that would 100% fix the problem at the border -- not deal with immigration law, and not deal with all of these reforms that everybody wants to do -- just fix the border in a very comprehensive way that Democrats should agree with."
US Vice President Kamala Harris (Leigh Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Crenshaw added he has spoken with Democratic colleagues who claim to care about the border, but aren't persuaded to support the closure of asylum policy loopholes and other legislative fixes he brings up.
Instead, he recounted how some Democrats purportedly voice support for adding more funding to the Customs & Border Protection budget to process asylum claims faster and prevent overcrowding or migrants having to sleep under bridges.
"That's it. That's all they'll do. And don't let them trick anybody," he said.