President Trump has manufactured the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the administration wants to stoke anti-immigrant fears rather than come up with a solution, according to a recently elected Democratic lawmaker from Texas.
“The challenge that we have with this administration is we’re not getting to the root causes of anything, so you have an administration that simply wants to keep people out, doesn’t want to address why people are fleeing their country, doesn’t want to address the role that America might play in that — both as a cause, both as a solution,” Rep.-elect Veronica Escobar told Hill.TV said Tuesday in an interview that aired the following day.
“We have to get to the bottom of this because it’s not going to change and it’s not going to stop,” said Escobar, who will succeed Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D) in the 16th Congressional District of Texas.
Thousands of Central American migrants started making their way toward the U.S. in October. While some have sought refuge in Mexico, others reached the border city of Tijuana over the weekend.
The group is made up of migrants fleeing crime and poverty, and for some LGBT members of the group, discrimination in their own home countries.
Leading up last week’s midterm elections, Trump repeatedly slammed the migrants, claiming the group is made up of dangerous criminals. He later ordered the Pentagon to deploy 5,600 additional troops to the border to prevent the migrants from crossing into the U.S.
Escobar emphasized that influx of migrants is a humanitarian crisis, and called Trump’s deployment of troops a political stunt.
“We have soldiers that aren’t going to spend Thanksgiving with their families because they’re on this political excursion and this drama created by a president who wants the country to fear these migrants who are fleeing their country because of poverty and crime,” she told Hill.TV.
Escobar, who previously served as a county judge and commissioner in El Paso, Texas, said lawmakers need to take a step back from the controversy surrounding the border and rethink their approach.
“We’ve got to stop focusing on this idea that the border is insecure – we have a secure border,” she said.
— Tess Bonn
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