Kevin McCarthy to visit border to assess situation

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) has announced a trip to the US-Mexico border next week to assess the present situation there.

McCarthy was talking to reporters outside the Capitol on Thursday.

Denouncing President Joe Biden’s handling of the border, the GOP leader said the president’s policies created a crisis at the border.

McCarthy said that on the first day in office President Biden did not have a plan to open US business and schools. He added that the president instead announced offering citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants was his priority.

“Last month alone, 100,000 migrants were encountered attempting to illegally cross our Southern border last month,” said McCarthy, according to the speech’s transcript. “To put that into perspective, that’s a larger population than President Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

He added the number of children held up at the border has tripled in just two weeks and the number of coronavirus positive migrants into Texas has almost doubled.

“The number of migrant children detained at the border has tripled in two just weeks, and are being kept in ‘jail-like‘ cells,” McCarthy said. “The number of migrants who have tested positive for the coronavirus after being released by the Border Patrol into Texas has nearly doubled.”

The House minority leader further added Republicans can work with the Biden administration to solve the problem.

“As Republicans, we know how to solve this problem,” he said. “We can work with [the administration] to make it happen.”

The Republican from California mentioned he had written to the president “to work on ideas to reverse some of the misuse and misdirected policies,” but “as of today, he has still not answered our letter.”

He made the announcement of his trip to the border, saying, “So next week, I will be traveling to the border with twelve other [House Republicans] to assess the crisis firsthand and come back with solutions to make sure our border is secure and that we can end this crisis that Biden has created.”

Watch Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans blasting Biden’s handling of the border: