Border & PR: A double-header loss for White House

Since taking office in January, President Joe Biden has tried to portray a kinder and gentler approach to the border issue by reversing the strong enforcement policies of his predecessor. But the administration is now facing a crisis as thousands and thousands of migrants – including many unaccompanied children – have poured across the border after being brought north from Central America by unscrupulous human smugglers.

Neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris – who two weeks ago was designated by the president as the go-to person to deal with the border crisis – have been to the border.

Ira Mehlman is a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He reacts to a recent report about a terrified young boy who was found by Border Patrol authorities as he was wandering alone in the desert; and video footage of two young girls unceremoniously dropped over a border fence by “coyotes.”

“Thankfully, that boy was found and rescued, but we don’t know about other kids who might have perished out there … we just don’t know,” he laments. “[And] thankfully those two little girls who were basically tossed over the fence by the human smugglers turned out okay.

“But the fact is that if you invite these sorts of situations, if you empower criminal organizations bringing people and children to the border, you’re going to have tragedies,” the FAIR spokesman shares.

Mehlman maintains that part of the responsibility for the chaos along the border rests with the decisions of the Biden administration.

“The PR is not good – there is no public support for what the president is doing,” he points out. “He is pandering to a radical wing of his party [at] great humanitarian and fiscal cost to the nation and to the people who are trying to get here.”

Numerous media outlets are pointing out that VP Harris has found time over the last couple of weeks to travel coast to coast – even to a bakery in Chicago – but has neither visited the border nor held a news conference to address her specific border duties. And she has apparently snubbed an invitation from the attorney general of Arizona to tour that state’s border region.

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