Don McLaughlin, mayor of Peabody, Texas, said Thursday that he expects at least two million illegal immigrants to cross the southern border in 2021, with few vaccinated against COVID-19.
“You are already at 1.2 million now, so by the end of the year I think you’re going to see over 2 million in my own personal opinion,” the mayor said on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “It feels like we’re giving up our rights as U.S. citizens to accommodate foreign, illegal immigrants coming into our country and it’s very, very frustrating,” McLaughlin continued.
McLaughlin noted that the migrants are arriving from “up to 150 countries now … How are they getting there? That’s the question I ask all the time. But you can’t get an answer out of the border patrol and you can’t get an answer out of this administration.” (RELATED: ‘Like The Wild, Wild West’: Texas Mayor Says ‘Southern Border Is Not Under Control. It’s A Mad House’)
The mayor said the influx of illegal immigrants “is changing our town completely” as he claimed that Wednesday a Cuban gang member walked into his town and was “given his walking papers by border patrol” because allegedly President Joe Biden’s administration has ruled that “all Cubans are free to go … they are not going to be detained and we’re not going to be sending them back. So we couldn’t do anything … and here he is walking into our community.”
McLaughlin said locals “are getting frustrated … they are fed up with it, they’re tired of it.” He said it is particularly infuriating because the federal government is constantly telling Americans to “social distance, wear your mask, get ready for a shutdown” and to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Yet you’ve got 1.2 million people that have come across that southern border. They’re not telling them, ‘Oh wait a minute, you been vaccinated, have you been anything?’ This is what we do.” (RELATED: ‘Every State Is Now A Border State’: Former DHS Secretary Says Biden Administration Is ‘Breaking The System’)
President Joe Biden reacts to shouted questions from reporters as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 21, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden is traveling to the Cincinnati, Ohio area to visit a training center for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and for a town hall event with CNN. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Vice President Kamala Harris, who was appointed as Biden’s border security czar, has stated that prospective immigrants to the U.S. should not enter illegally, but did not say whether border patrol would begin turning more migrants back.
Biden’s eight-year path to citizenship plan would allow all illegal immigrants living in the U.S. as of Jan. 1, 2021, to achieve temporary legal status in five years and to apply for citizenship after an additional three years. White House press secretary Jen Psaki has blamed the Trump administration for the surge of illegal immigrants at the border.