House Republican Chip Roy launched a blistering attack on Donald Trump’s record on immigration as president, saying that the 2024 Republican frontrunner failed on the issue and linking the failure to “this crisis right now.”
Illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border has surged over the past couple of years. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 2.4 million migrant encounters in the 2023 fiscal year, up from 1.7 million in 2021.
Roy, who is supporting the presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, made the comment during an appearance on Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business Network show on Friday.
Roy criticized Republicans in Congress for “giving more money to Alejandro Mayorkas,” the secretary of Homeland Security, and said that they should “use the power of the purse” to get the Joe Biden administration to tighten up immigration policy.
Cavuto replied: “And that’s exactly what Donald Trump said about this border deal; it better be perfect. He was sending a clear message to the speaker that it wasn’t. So, at least on this, you and Donald Trump are on the same page.”
Roy said he did agree with President Trump on a lot of different things before sharply criticizing his immigration policy. The Texas Republican added: “But I would acknowledge President Trump failed, along with Republican’s [former speaker] Paul Ryan and the guys. They failed in 2018 to actually move a border security bill to tighten this so that we weren’t dealing with this crisis right now. They failed to actually get the wall built.”
Roy added: “President Trump signed 12 continuing resolutions after he said he would never sign another one if they didn’t give him the money to finish building the wall. Look, this stuff matters. It adds up. I call balls and strikes. This is not hard. This is why I support Governor DeSantis, who has delivered better than any politician I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” Newsweek reached out to representatives of Donald Trump for comment by email on Saturday.
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Trump has made immigration central to his 2024 election campaign, vowing to “immediately stop the invasion of our southern border.” More specifically, he has pledged to end birthright citizenship; deploy thousands of troops to the Mexican border; and cease federal funding for the shelter and transport of undocumented migrants.
This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said state authorities would refuse to comply with a Biden administration order to stop blocking U.S. Border Patrol agents from the site.
Operating on instruction from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, state officials have been refusing to allow federal CBP personnel to enter the Shelby Park area of Eagle Pass. On January 12, a woman and two children drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico just opposite the site.
In December, the Democratic mayors of New York, Denver and Chicago issued a joint call for more federal assistance to help contend with the migrant surge. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said: “All of our cities have reached a point where we are either close to capacity or nearly out of room.”
Since 2022, Abbott has been bussing migrants from Texas to Democratic-run ‘sanctuary cities.’
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.