Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, says the immigration issue at the U.S.-Mexico border is "not a crisis yet, but it's going to get there very soon," contrasting comments made Monday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
"It is not a crisis yet, but it will become a crisis," Cuellar warned during an appearance Tuesday on Fox News' "America’s Newsroom." "The numbers have been increasing, and as your report just said a few minutes ago, the numbers are just increasing every day. The number of unaccompanied kids, the number of families who are coming in are just increasing every day. In my district, just a couple of days ago, 166 people. And it goes on, and just different numbers are going up.
"So, it's not a crisis yet, but it's going to get there very soon."
"The snapshot right now — is it a crisis? No. Is it getting there? Yes," he added. "You add COVID-19 on top of that. You add a lot of the border communities are not getting the vaccines fast enough. The fact they aren't letting Mexican legal visa holders come across, but they're letting undocumented people in, that does cause a concern to me and a lot of my border community leaders down there.
"So, yes, and if you look at the Border Patrol, they're operating at 25%."
Mayorkas blamed the Trump administration for the current crisis at the southern border – DHS has seen spikes of over 100% in illegal border crossings this year.
"Let me explain to you why [fixing the broken immigration system] is hard and why it is going take time," Mayorkas told reporters Monday.
"I think it is important to understand what we have inherited because it defines the situation as it currently stands. Entire systems are not rebuilt in a day or in a few weeks," he began. "To put it succinctly, the prior administration dismantled our nation’s immigration system in its entirety."