Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan backed President Joe Biden’s choice to not visit the southern border during a Tuesday Fox News appearance.
“I think the president is fully aware of the problems that we have at the border as you know, he is stepping up and making I think very important personnel changes,” Dingell told “America Reports” co-host Sandra Smith. “I think that addressing the border has got to be a number one priority for all of us and it gets too political up here, and I hope that it’s one of the things that we can somehow in a bipartisan way actually address in the next Congress.” (RELATED: ‘We Are Doing It Wrong’: Democratic State Rep Calls For Trump-Era Border Policy To Continue)
“There are more important things going on,” Biden said when asked why he was not visiting the border while making a trip to Arizona to the construction site of a new manufacturing plant for computer chips.
United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encountered over 2.3 million migrants in Fiscal Year 2022, while almost 600,000 migrants evaded CBP, according to Fox News. CBP encountered 230,000 migrants in October, the first month of the new fiscal year.
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“I don’t care if he visits the border or not. He doesn’t need to visit the border to know we’ve got a problem. He’s got people who report to him every day about what the problem is, and sometimes we fixate on these little issues,” Dingell said when pressed by Smith. “You think the president doesn’t know we have a problem at the border and what the issues are? I know he does.”
“I think he knows it’s got to be addressed. He’s gotten the reports, seen the photos. So, I mean — at some point he may or may not go but I think he knows what has to be fixed and you have seen him begin that process.
Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh made similar comments during a Friday appearance on Fox Business Network.
“Some people are so focused on the southern border, and that’s really not the issue,” Walsh said, claiming that the real issue was the lack of a “good, strong” policy on immigration.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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