Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed President Joe Biden‘s administration Thursday night after a new report detailed the chaos at the southern border.
Pompeo, speaking on Fox News‘ The Ingraham Angle, was reacting to a Wall Street Journal story about how migrants from throughout Latin America have been drawn to the border ‘by the hundreds of thousands.’
The former secretary of state said the Biden administration is wrecking the Trump administration’s blueprints for the region.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed President Joe Biden’s administration Thursday night after a new report detailed the chaos at the southern border on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle
‘This is another example … where we left them a perfectly good plan,’ he said. ‘We left them a perfectly good plan in Afghanistan, they turned it into chaos. We left them a perfectly good plan with respect to how we handled our southern border, how we kept our sovereignty.’
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that from October 2020 through August, nearly 300,000 migrants from countries other than Mexico came to the border.
In the entirety of the pandemic-riddled 2020, the figure was nearly 44,000.
In July and August, immigrants from Mexico or individual countries from the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) were outnumbered by those from Latin America and the Caribbean for the first time.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that from October 2020 through August, nearly 300,000 migrants from countries other than Mexico came to the border
Thousands of migrants continue to converge in a makeshift camp under the bridge that connects Del Rio, Texas and Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña, in the latest border emergency and humanitarian crisis facing President Biden.
The camp had swelled to some 10,000 migrants at one point, with thousands seen wading across the Rio Grande River daily. Many are Haitians who were granted asylum in Chile, with some Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans also present.
About 3,000 remained by late Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said. The number peaked Saturday as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration´s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing trying to seek asylum.
Amid the surge of the highly infectious Delta variant, the crowded conditions of the camp also raised concerns about the possibility of COVID-19 outbreaks endangering the health of the migrants.
Food and water has been scarce in the makeshift camp, around 20 migrants told Reuters, and temperatures have risen to around 99 Fahrenheit. Reporters witnessed hundreds of migrants wading through the Rio Grande river and back into Mexico to stock up on essentials they say they are not receiving on the American side.
In July and August, immigrants from Mexico or individual countries from the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) were outnumbered by those from Latin America and the Caribbean for the first time
‘We avoided a humanitarian crisis at the border and they ripped that plan up too,’ Pompeo added. ‘Now they’re trying to get back to it, I’m confident they’ll try and blame our administration for what’s happening as well, the same way they did with Afghanistan.’
Recently Biden has tried to reboot Trump’s ‘remain in Mexico’ policy.
‘But I think the American people can see,’ Pompeo added. ‘These folks have implemented their ideas poorly. The humanitarian crisis is very significant.’
The ex-secretary of state believes there’s now a ‘green light’ for migrants to come to America
The ex-secretary of state believes there’s now a ‘green light’ for migrants to come to America.
‘Every person who’s thinking, ‘Maybe I should come,’ will all see that these Haitians — who often came from Central and South America, and they’ve been there quite a while, they didn’t just flee Haiti in the last week or two weeks after the earthquake — every single person who’s been thinking about coming to the United States illegally now will see that there’s a green light, that they’re gonna be released inside the United States,’ he said.
‘I think we’re at the very front end of what will be a significant tidal wave of illegal immigration,’ Pompeo added. ‘We’ve seen it for the first eight months of the Biden administration, I suspect the next eight will only increase that.’
‘I think we’re at the very front end of what will be a significant tidal wave of illegal immigration,’ Pompeo added. ‘We’ve seen it for the first eight months of the Biden administration, I suspect the next eight will only increase that.’
The White House has faced sharp bipartisan condemnation over the situation at the border.
Republicans say Biden administration policies led Haitians to believe they would get asylum.
Democrats are expressing outrage after images went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants.
Many of the 8,600 who remain there have resorted to fashioning makeshift tents using discarded clothing and tree branches in order to provide at least some shelter from the elements.
The heat has been punishing over the last week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s. Families have resorted to bathing in the grimy water of the Rio Grande river to cool off.
The heat has been punishing over the last week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s. Families have resorted to bathing in the grimy water of the Rio Grande river to cool off
Officials said the U.S. State Department is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided there to return, but it’s complicated because some no longer have legal status there.
Meanwhile, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the “inhumane” large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants.
Foote, who was appointed in July, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying he was stepping down immediately “with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes.”
“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,” he wrote. “Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”
The career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti.
State Department spokesman Ned Price disputed Foote´s assertions, saying his proposals had been “fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process.”
“Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false,” Price said.