Thursday, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) addressed President Joe Biden and his administration’s handling of the surge of immigrants at the United States’ border with Mexico.
Cuellar said immigrants are not heeding to the White House’s message of “don’t come now, come later.” Instead, he said immigrants are listening to their family members currently in the country and people from “criminal organizations” who promise to get them across the border. He called on the Biden administration to change its messaging to fix the problem.
“There are three messages — and I want to put yourself and myself in Central America,” Cuellar outlined. “One message from the White House — don’t come now, come later. Message number two from the family members and neighbors — ‘Hey, Pedro, ya pasamos. We’re able to come. Come over right now.’ Message number three is from the criminal organizations — ‘Hey, I can get you across. Pay me a little bit of money.’ And they are going to listen to message number two and three. Quite honestly, that is what’s happening until we have a solid message that we can send down to Central America. And by the way, I was involved with the first $750 million for Central America. … Total we put almost close to $2 billion since we started this program — almost $2 billion — and we still are facing the same situation since 2014.”
Story cited here.
