Biden Sees Illegal Immigrants as ‘Future Democratic Voters. It’s About Power’: Cruz
Yet another Democratic official has called on President Joe Biden to divert the nation’s surging illegal immigrant population to Republican states — something a Republican senator says Biden would be all-too happy to do, because the president sees an uncontrolled border as a means to “change the demographic constitution of the nation to elect more Democrats.”
After Illinois has taken in 15,000 illegal immigrants, “[i]t is time for the federal government to take a much more active role in managing the transport and destination of the transport of asylum seekers,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D), whose family has been closely allied to Barack Obama, wrote Joe Biden on Monday. “Our nation is large and resourceful. Allowing just one state to lay the burden upon a certain few states run by Democrats is untenable.”
He called on Biden to assure the burden of caring for illegal immigrants is shared in a more “bipartisan” way.
That echoes the words of New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), the mayor of another sanctuary jurisdiction, who asked the Biden administration to send illegal immigrants to every city and village in the United States. “We have 108,000 cities, villages, towns. If everyone takes a small portion of that, and if it’s coordinated at the border to ensure that those who are coming here to this country in a lawful manner is actually moved throughout the entire country, it is not a burden on one city,” said Adams.
“Even advocates for sanctuary cities are changing their tune,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday. “Tactics like those used by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to get other states to share the burden of this uncontrolled border chaos did more to persuade on this issue in one year than anything else in the last 40 years.”
While Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) agreed on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch,” he said blue state officials have not suffered anything comparable to his home state or other border states. “Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, who faced with 110,000 illegal immigrants, he has said that illegal immigration is a crisis and that it is ‘destroying’ New York City. Well, if 110,000 is destroying New York City, what does he think 7.6 million are doing to the state of Texas and the other states on our southern border?”
Cruz said even the dramatic images captured at the border do not do the situation justice. “Unless you’ve seen it firsthand, I promise you it is worse than you think,” said Cruz.
Border Patrol agents have encountered 6.2 million illegal entries at the southern border since Joe Biden took office, not counting at least 1.6 million “gotaways.” Most have been released into the interior of the nation with a notice to appear at a trial, which most will likely ignore.
Concern over border conditions crept beyond Republicans, first to border state Democrats like Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.). Sinema is currently working with Senate Republicans to secure up to $6 billion in border security funding. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) gave illegal immigrants a lecture via CNN last month, saying, “If you’re going to leave your country, go somewhere else.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who represents Laredo, said DHS has not put enough illegal immigrants through deportation — the legal requirement for all illegal border crossings — and history shows our country must “have real repercussions, and I mean deport people, otherwise, they’re going to keep coming to the U.S.”
But many Democrats have demanded policies that critics say will only act as a magnet for more illegal immigration. Pritzker demanded the Biden administration broaden the number of federal welfare programs and other benefits available to illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, New York City is moving to suspend its right-to-shelter law, which Adams said does not apply during a migration crisis. Mayor Adams blamed his woes on Abbott, whom he called, “this madman in Texas.”
But while Democrats have increasingly identified the problem of the open border, “none of them say the next step, which is the reason this disaster is happening, is because my party caused it,” Cruz told Perkins.
“There are two reasons for it. Number one, this Democrat Party has handed their agenda over to the radical fringe. ... On immigration, it’s the open borders crazies who believe we shouldn’t have a border, that we have no right to have a border, that anyone on the face of the earth who wants to come to America should be allowed to come,” Cruz said.
“But number two, Joe Biden and other partisan Democrats look at every one of these illegal immigrants and they view them as future Democrat voters.”
“They want to change the demographic constitution of the nation to elect more Democrats,” Cruz told Perkins. “This is about power. It’s about political power.”
“And if thousands upon thousands of children have to suffer as a consequence, they’re more than happy to pay that price,” Cruz continued.
Republicans have increasingly identified illegal immigration as a long-term Democratic electoral strategy. “They had this plan before they were elected, to get as many people here to vote as possible. They want to give them amnesty,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) told Perkins last July.
In 2009, an official in the Service Employees International Union named Eliseo Medina cited reshaping a more “progressive” electorate as his reason for supporting amnesty. Medina, an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, told a left-wing conference:
“If we reform the immigration laws — it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if you had even the same ratio, two out of three [Hispanics voting for Democrats], if we get 8 million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting, we will create a governing coalition for the long-term, not just for an election cycle?”
References on the Left to demographic change ushering in an “emerging Democratic majority” stretch back to at least 2002.
Cruz noted in a letter this week that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has diverted U.S. Air Marshals, intended to keep flights safe from terrorism, to perform administrative tasks at the U.S. border with Mexico. Mayorkas “is not trying to stop illegal immigration. He wants more of it. He’s trying to accelerate it. He’s trying to facilitate it. He views his job as an effort to get even more efficient, taking people,” Cruz told Perkins.
“This is indefensible. And I got to tell you, the people who are suffering, the thousands upon thousands of people who are dying, the crimes that are being committed, the children that are being brutalized, the women who are being sexually assaulted, the Americans who are dying of drug overdoses — it is a travesty at a level never seen on our border until Joe Biden and these radical Democrats came into office,” said Cruz.
“It’s not even that they’re blind. … They want this outcome,” Cruz emphasized.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.