President Joe Biden is accusing GOP governors of "playing politics with human beings" and being "un-American" by shipping migrants to Democrat-led locations after GOP Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida transported Latin and South American migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, D.C.
"Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props," Biden said late Thursday to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Caucus, adding that his administration is "committed to fixing the immigration system," reports The New York Post.
"What they’re doing is simply wrong," Biden also said about the governors' protests against his immigration policies. "It’s un-American, it’s reckless."
The president added that his administration is working to ensure immigration is "safe and orderly and humane," and accused Abbott and DeSantis of interfering with the process "by waging these political stunts."
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are "long overdue" for working to provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants such as Dreamers, those in temporary status, farmworkers, and other essential workers, said Biden.
"We need to modernize our laws so businesses get the workers they need, and families don’t have to wait decades to be brought back together," the president said. "It’s time to get it done," he said.
Abbott since April has bused just under 8,000 migrants to Washington D.C., including the group of 100 dropped off outside Vice President Kamala Harris' home at the Naval Observatory Thursday morning. He has sent another 11,000 immigrants to New York and another 300 to Chicago.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has sent more than 1,800 migrants to Washington D.C. since May, and DeSantis chose Martha's Vineyard for the migrants' destination.
Florida has earmarked $12 million in its most recent budget to transport migrants to "sanctuary destinations" outside the state.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, like Biden, slammed the governor's acts on Thursday, calling them a "cruel, premeditated political stunt" that involved people of all ages.
"We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families who were promised a home, promised a job, put on a bus and driven to a place that they do not know," she said, adding that local officials had not been informed that the migrants were being sent their way.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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