The White House on Thursday called the decision by Republican governors to send migrants by bus and plane to Washington and an exclusive island in northeast Washington “shameful.” USA.
(Read here: Morgues on the US border are overwhelmed by the increase in migrant deaths)
For months, local Republican officials, including the powerful governor of Texas, Greg Abbotthave been moving immigrants to Democratic strongholds across the country.
(See here: Woman assaults migrants in the US because she doesn’t like how they speak English)
They do so to denounce the policy of President Joe Biden, whom they accuse of having turned the border with Mexico into a colanderand to try to put immigration at the center of the campaign for the mid-term elections, on November 8.
These practices of sending migrants from the south to the north of the country have become a political battlea few weeks before the legislative elections in which the Democrats may lose control of Congress.
Vice President Harris claims our border is ‘secure’ and denies there is a crisis. We are sending migrants to her yard to urge the Biden administration to do its job
“It is a cold and premeditated political maneuver,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, accusing heavyweights of the American right of using migrants as “pawns” in political chess, in a “cruel” way. “.
On Thursday morning, two migrant buses arrived near the Washington residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden has tasked with dealing with the explosive immigration issue.
They were sent by the very conservative Abbott, campaigning for his re-election in this state at the forefront of the wave of illegal immigration from Central American countries.
“Vice President Harris claims our border is ‘secure’ and denies there is a crisis. We are sending migrants to your backyard to urge the Biden administration to do its job and secure the borderTweeted the governor of Texas. Abbott claims to have sent 10,000 migrants since April to Washington, New York and, more recently, Chicago.
Trump’s Potential Rival
On Wednesday, the influential Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantisjoined this move, claiming to have sent two migrant planes to the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard, a mythical vacation spot that knew how to receive the Kennedys, the Clintons and the Obamas.
A group of about 50 Venezuelan migrantsincluding children, arrived Wednesday on this island off New England’s Atlantic coast, frequented by the wealthy Democratic elite often targeted by conservatives.
Democratic leaders must come down from their ivory towers and face reality
Although the governor of Florida organized the transport, the planes were arriving from Texas and not from his state, according to the local newspaper ‘MV Times’ and a local politician.
“Currently, immigrants are being taken to Martha’s Vineyard by charter flights from Texas. Many do not know where they are. They say they were told they would be given housing and jobs,” Dylan Fernandes, a local Democratic lawmaker, tweeted Wednesday night.
DeSantis, also a candidate for re-election as governor, is seen as a potential rival to former President Donald Trump should he run for the White House in 2024.
The Republican denounced the “farce” of the Democratic states that advocate the reception of migrants. “As soon as we deliver even a tiny fraction of what border cities have to put up with every day to their door, they go ballistic,” DeSantis said in a speech Thursday.
“Residents of Martha’s Vineyard should be excited,” Christina Pushaw of DeSantis’ communications team quipped on Twitter on Wednesday. “Illegal immigrants will make the city more diverse, which is a strength, right?”
Cruel treatment
immigration policy, a sensitive topic in the United Statesit is even more so a few weeks before the mid-term elections.
The fight against illegal immigration is one of the priority issues for Republicans and the transfer of migrants to the interior of the country offers them the opportunity to put the debate back at the center of the news.
Transporting these migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington “was a necessity,” said Republican Andy Biggs, a representative from Arizona in the lower house of the US Congress.
“Democratic leaders need to come down from their ivory towers and face reality,” he said. On his side, however, the Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, promised Thursday to focus on welcoming and not rejecting migrants.
“Exploiting vulnerable people as part of a political coup is outrageous and cruel,” said Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, where Martha’s Vineyard is located.
Charlie Crist, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the Florida gubernatorial race, denounced a “political calculation” aimed at “serving fresh meat to his electoral base.”
The Democrat denounced the cost of this operation, stating that Florida was spending “12 million dollars to get innocent immigrant children out of our State.”
AFP
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