17 MARCH 2021

Julián Castro, Mayor Trey Mendez, Experts to Respond to Gov. Abbott, GOP Political Stunts and Rhetoric on the Border

Click here for recording of the call

DALLAS— Today, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, Mayor of Brownsville Trey Mendez and Texas advocates and immigration experts hosted a telephonic press briefing in response to Governor Greg Abbott’s hypocritical and misleading remarks today about the Biden administration’s plans to manage the border.

Republicans have been on a crazed media tour attempting to distract Americans from the success of the American Recovery Plan by employing scare tactics against the migrant children and families seeking refuge and asylum. Republicans, many of whom supported Trump’s deeply unpopular, cruel, and failed immigration policies, falsely allege that President Biden’s plans to create an immigration system rooted in fairness and humanity is the driving cause of migration and not the policies of the previous administration. In fact, the last four years under President Trump gutted the legal immigration system and asylum process and systematically separated children from their families, bringing us to where we are today. 

Sergio Gonzales, Executive Director of the Immigration Hub said:

“The hypocrisy of Republicans is on full display. Governor Abbott, Rep. McCarthy and the rest of the GOP are desperate to use the border as a way to distract from the highly popular American Rescue Plan and the disastrous and divisive policies of the Trump era. In fact, what we’re seeing is a result of four years of Trump’s immigration agenda and Republican failures to address a broken system. Instead of working with the Biden-Harris administration on actual solutions, Republicans continue to peddle in stoking fear and xenophobia. This misguided strategy cost them in 2018, 2020 and it will backfire again.”

Wendy Young, President of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said:

“These children and others like them aren’t here by choice. They aren’t here because of any election or political change in the US. They’re here because they’re running for their lives and searching for a future free from constant fear. When the Trump administration chose to ignore special protections for children migrating alone and closed the border to them regardless of age or vulnerability, they exacerbated dangers by pushing unaccompanied children back into dangerous tent cities or overcrowded substandard facilities where they were left alone to face trafficking and other dangerous criminal activities. That is unconscionable and it's not what's happening under the Biden administration. The Biden administration, in just a few weeks, has implemented many of the changes urged by KIND our partner orgs and child welfare experts including initiating a cross-government interagency response at an unprecedented level. They’re opening emergency facilities with guardrails in place to ensure that children are appropriately cared for and released quickly from these facilities. We owe them this, simply because they are children.”

Cristina Tzintzun, founder of Jolt TX said:

“We can have an immigration system that works, that works for American workers, American families and honors the dignity of migrant families and protects children. The reason we don't have such a system, a system that the majority of americans support, is because it serves the interests of people like Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, who have consistently stood in the way of progress on immigration and bipartisan legislation. Maintaining the status quo means these politicians continue to use migrants as a political punching bag that they can scapegoat and paint as diseased criminals even when they happen to be innocent migrant children that are simply seeking a better life.”

Mayor of Brownsville Trey Mendez said:

"The number of migrants coming through the Brownsville port of entry is not a crisis and we have been working with the Biden administration to ensure the safety of citizens on the border as well as the safe travel of these migrants to their final destination. The real crisis is the misinformation and lack of leadership from several Republican leaders who choose to politicize and sensationalize the situation to incite their base and continue the division started by President Trump. The Covid positivity rate among migrants coming through Brownsville (7.3%) is much less than the 9% rate that was in place when the Governor decided that the State would be re-opened without mandatory facial coverings."

Secretary Julián Castro said:

“We have the Biden administration competently and effectively working through this immigration system to build it back up, improve it and make sure we can treat people humanely, compassionately, and with common sense. They’re having to pick up the pieces of a system in tatters because of Donald Trump, and for Greg Abbott to lay the blame at the feet of Joe Biden is completely off base, it's self serving, it's wrong. But what we can say about the Biden administration is that they are working hard in very concrete ways and making progress to ensure that we live up to the best of our our best values as a country and that we treat children and all people who are seeking asylum or are in this country undocumented with commonsense, with compassion and with respect.”

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The Immigration Hub is a national organization dedicated to advancing fair and just immigration policies through strategic leadership, innovative communications strategies, legislative advocacy and collaborative partnerships.