U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) holds a news conference during a visit to El Paso, Texas, March 15, 2021.
President Joe Biden refuses to acknowledge the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, but on Monday (15), House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and a dozen other House Republicans visited a detention center in El Paso, Texas. McCarthy noted that terrorists are exploiting the border.
McCarthy said at a news conference Monday that people on terrorist watch lists from Yemen, Iran and Turkey are trying to cross the southern border, and some of them have already been caught.
McCarthy was then attacked by Democrats. Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, tweeted Monday, “Strange that neither the chairman of the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee nor the congressman from the border states had heard about this and was asked to do a briefing. Pretty sure he’s either wrong or lying.”
Gayego’s comments received widespread media attention from The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Microsoft-NBC, the financial news site “The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Microsoft-NBC, Business Insider, and The Independent have all reported on the issue.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, said Monday that McCarthy’s claim that terrorists crossed the border is being used to “fuel division in America” and stoke fears of immigrants.
We’ve seen my Republican colleagues fuel xenophobia by stirring up fear and anger against immigrants,” Escobar said, according to The Independent. You know, things like healthy immigrants bringing disease into our country and things like that.”
The U.S. news site Axios reversed the Democrats’ comments on Tuesday, reporting that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told Congress on Tuesday that four people had been arrested at the southern border since early October last year after matching names in the FBI’s terrorist screening database. The briefing was fully consistent with the Republicans’ statement.
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