House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still backs President Biden‘s handling of the southern border despite new data out showing a record-breaking number of unaccompanied minors making the dangerous trek to the United States, her spokesman told Fox News Thursday.
Pelosi said on March 19 that Biden has the border situation “under control” and expressed confidence with Biden’s “values-based [and] humanitarian” approach.
And just on Wednesday, Pelosi said: “we’re on a good path at the border under the leadership of Joe Biden.”
PELOSI SAYS BIDEN HAS SOUTHERN BORDER SITUATION ‘UNDER CONTROL’
On Thursday, however, the Biden administration revealed jaw-dropping numbers showing just how stressed the immigration system at the southern border has become this year.
U.S. border officials picked up nearly 19,000 children traveling across the southern border alone in March, the largest monthly number ever recorded.
Overall, the tally for all migrants encountered in March of all ages was 172,000, a 100% percent increase from the already high numbers in February — Biden’s first full month in office.
GOP SENATORS RELEASE MORE VIDEO FOOTAGE OF SOUTHERN BORDER VISIT
Fox News reached out to Pelosi’s office Thursday to determine whether her past praise for Biden’s immigration policy had waivered given the new numbers.
“The Speaker stands by her previous comments,” Pelosi’s spokesperson Drew Hammill told Fox News.
Many Democrats have panned former President Donald Trump’s border policies as inhumane and cruel, and have been pleased with Biden’s effort to stop border wall construction, to exempt unaccompanied children from coronavirus-related expulsions and to end Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that left migrants in tent cities across the border.
Pelosi has said it will take time to make changes from the Trump era, but she has remained confident Biden will put the U.S. immigration system on a more “humane” path.
But critics have panned Pelosi’s praise for Biden and said she’s downplaying the overcrowding and human suffering at the border.
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Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), reacted to Pelosi’s praise of Biden by saying she’s the “least smart congresswoman” ever.
“The bottom line is [that] children are dying,” Homan told “Fox and Friends” Thursday. “Children are being abandoned … It is not under control. This is a mess.”
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