On March 22, when asked if she would visit the border, Vice President Harris replied, “Not today,” and then started laughing. This behavior sparked public criticism.
According to Fox News, on 22nd local Time, Harris arrived at Jacksonville International Airport in Florida on Air Force One. A reporter said during an interview that the immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border was growing and asked if she had plans to visit the southern border region.
Harris hesitated for a moment, then said, “Not today!” She said and laughed. Harris then added that she had been there before and would probably go back later. The scene was exposed and sparked a lot of debate among netizens.
Many people felt that Harris’ laughter in the face of the border issue was indeed out of place.
In response to a question about the U.S.-Mexico border, Harris laughed Web video screenshot
“There is something more or less wrong with a person who always laughs when asked serious questions. The situation at the (U.S.-Mexico) border is not funny in the least.” Image source social media, below
“She dodges every difficult question in her career with this petulant, contrived laugh.”
“The child is in a cage and Harris is laughing.”
Many politicians and community members, too, have criticized Harris for laughing at the border immigration issue.
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Fox News, “Well, that’s not funny. I hope the vice president and the president will go to the (U.S.-Mexico) border. I’ll be happy to meet them there, where they can see what I see and talk to border experts. The Border Patrol, health and Human Services, local government officials and stakeholders are bearing the burden of this administration’s open border policy today.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, wrote, “Look, Harris grinned at reporters when asked if he had plans to visit the border. When this administration says they are serious about solving this crisis, don’t believe them.”
Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, meanwhile, asked her, “What’s so funny about keeping kids in cages ……”
Fox News 22 reported that the Democratic administration refused to call the border issue a “crisis” while insisting on describing it as a “circumstance. The media said that for this reason, the White House did not respond to the question “whether it believes that Harris’s behavior is appropriate” in the first place.
Neither the White House press briefing nor Harris’s personal social media accounts had responded to the question by early morning on the 24th, local time.
Harris’s laugh has sparked controversy more than once. According to the New York Post and other media reports last year, Harris does laugh on various occasions, and some serious occasions are no exception.
Harris laughs during an interview on 60 Minutes Video screenshot
In October 2020, then-President Trump also said on the subject, “She’s not going to be the first woman president, and you can’t let that happen. I said, ‘Is she sick? (something wrong with her) and kept laughing and talking about those very serious issues.”
More than 15,000 underage immigrants detained in worrying conditions
The public outcry over Harris stems from the high-profile U.S.-Mexico border issue.
On March 16, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that the number of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has skyrocketed and that the U.S. has deported most single adult illegal immigrants and illegal immigrant families, but will not deport unaccompanied illegal immigrant children. The situation of immigrant children subsequently raised concerns.
According to CBS 20, records show that there are currently about 15,500 unaccompanied minor immigrants in U.S. government custody. In total, more than 5,000 unaccompanied children were being held at facilities operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as well as at border patrol stations along the U.S.-Mexico border, as of the morning of the 20th.
According to government records, these unaccompanied children, who have been held by CBP for an average of 136 hours, far exceed the 72 hours required by U.S. law, CBS said. Mark Weber, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said on 20 that HHS is placing about 10,500 children, in state-licensed emergency housing facilities and shelters.
Then, a set of pictures broke the Internet.
On the 22nd, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) shared photos of a migrant facility in Donna, Texas. The photos showed children crammed into a room with no precautions in place. Fox News wrote in its report that this is how the Biden administration has treated border migrants during the border crisis and Epidemic.
Photo credit Henry Kuehle’s office, below
“freedom of the press, gone.”
Also exposed and sparking criticism is the U.S. government’s press restrictions on border immigration.
Fox News reported that the U.S. White House has restricted media access to border facilities on the grounds of preventing the spread of the new crown virus.
This has sparked discontent in the media community. Journalist John Moore (Joohn Moore) said on the 19th that this is unprecedented under the Obama and Trump administrations. Moore wrote, “I respectfully request that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, cease its restrictions on media access to its border operations”; on the 22nd, he followed up with another tweet asking, “I’m a photojournalist, why is the U.S. government preventing me from accessing border immigration facilities?”
Journalist expresses displeasure at U.S. government’s access restrictions Photo source social media
The Democratic administration’s handling of the border crisis has also sparked opposition and criticism from Republicans, Fox News said.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted the Biden Administration‘s outrageous and hypocritical refusal to allow media access in a letter dated 22.
Cruz said that when the Biden administration first took office, it stressed the importance of “truth and transparency” through White House spokesman Leonardo Psaki, and expressed “deep respect for the role of a free and independent press. Yet in the face of a crisis of its own making, the Biden administration has now changed its tune. The U.S. government is hiding the truth from the American people.
Source U.S. government website
U.S.-Mexico border issue, bipartisan crossfire again
U.S. media said Harris laughed when asked about the border, which is seen by Republicans as not giving the border issue the attention it deserves.
U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Harris, as vice president, “laughed off” the century-old humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. He said Republicans are different, as they have been concerned about border security and have responded positively to the needs of Border Patrol agents.
Source: Social Media
The border and immigration issues have become a hot topic in the current bipartisan exchanges in the United States.
Earlier this week, McCarthy took aim at Biden: “This crisis is a result of the new administration’s policies, and nothing says that better than the phrase ‘Biden border crisis.'” John Katko, the senior Republican member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, agreed that there are already signs of a crisis at the border.
Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotoon believes the current “border crisis” is the result of Biden’s campaign promises of Amnesty, open borders and free medical care for illegal immigrants.
Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar said the crisis is a legacy of the Trump Administration because “we’ve been seeing an increase in unaccompanied children since April of last year.
Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration’s immigration policies are undoubtedly inhumane, “but our current policies are just as much of a failure.”
“Immigration is like the stock market.”
Since 2018, the scale of migration of people from Central America to the United States has been expanding. Some people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been borrowing Mexico to try to enter the United States. This year in particular, on March 11, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said law enforcement officers detained close to 100,000 illegal immigrants at the U.S. border with Mexico in February, a 28 percent increase from the previous year. The U.S.-Mexico border is now facing the largest influx of illegal immigrants in 20 years.
In February, 100,000 immigrants attempted to enter the U.S. Source: Social Media
Alejandro Solalinde, an advocate for immigrant groups, said, “Immigrants are like the stock market, reacting positively or negatively to any windfall.” “Since Biden became a presidential candidate, he has given hope to immigrants, although he never said the U.S. would open its doors to all immigrants.”
The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump pushed for immigration policy reform in a hard-line manner. For example, he ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established under Obama, implemented the “Mujahideen” ban, and replaced Family-based chain migration with a merit-based policy based on Education and employment considerations. This has led to public criticism, but also made some people feel that immigration is not so easy.
After Biden came to power, he abolished a number of “zero tolerance” immigration policies during the Trump era, and no longer deport immigrant children who are not accompanied by adults, many people in Latin America are looking forward to the relaxation of U.S. immigration policies, and have been moving north in groups, the number of people has far exceeded the processing capacity of the border areas, which makes the immigration issue once again become the focus of political controversy in the United States.
In March of this year, the Biden administration tested the waters of comprehensive immigration reform as the U.S. House of Representatives voted on the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. According to the plans of these two bills, the U.S. government will provide naturalization channels for more than 2.5 million “dreamers” who came to the U.S. as children and undocumented immigrants who “live in the U.S. for humanitarian protection,” as well as more than 1 million undocumented farm workers. This is a new opportunity for many people.
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