As the ensuing border crisis continues with no end in sight, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been receiving many questions about Biden’s plan, or lack thereof, to take action and prevent rampant illegal immigration.
In a recent press briefing, one reporter brought up the topic, asking KJP to expound upon Biden’s plans to address the border crisis. “I also want to ask about the innovation interview, the President said that he was examining ways to potentially shut down the border. That’s a phrase that can mean lots of different things to different people. So I’m wondering if you could maybe explain what the President means?” he asked.
Jean-Pierre answered, giving a typical rebuttal she often offers to reporters asking about Biden’s plans at the border. The spokeswoman dodged the question and blamed Republicans for not passing the bipartisan Senate proposal, which the GOP criticized as being an insufficient measure to combat illegal immigration.
“I think the bottom line with all of this, and I’ve said this many times, the number one way to really deal with what’s happening at the border is to move forward with the bipartisan agreement proposal that came forward out of the Senate. And that obviously was rejected by Republicans because of what the former president, Republicans, that’s what we want to see. That’s how we deal with the broken system. The immigration system obviously been broken for decades now. And dealing with the challenges at the border. We’re always going to look at executive actions. We are, we have been, but really, really, truly want to move forward. We have to make sure that we get this proposal done,” KJP responded.
However, the reporter didn’t back down, pointing out that she didn’t answer his question about whether Biden would take direct action via executive actions. He offered some examples from former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
“I understand that your preference is obviously it’s about legislation. Frankenstein back to life, but since the President himself said that you guys are looking at those executive actions can you talk is the sort of universe here just trying to restrict asylum claims? Is it changing processing times? Or is it as extreme, you know, President Trump when he talked about I talked about like, ending legal travel or legal trade across the border?” he continued asking.
KJP responded, noting that they are “evaluating all options,” while explaining that they haven’t made a decision yet. The press secretary then returned to prioritizing the bipartisan Senate agreement as the the desired approach to mitigating the border crisis.
“I think, here’s what I can say. We evaluate all options, right? We do. We evaluate all options, as it as it regards as it relates to executive actions. We just have not made a decision on this yet. But we believe, the President believes it’s important to evaluate those options to see what’s at our disposal to move forward. And we haven’t made a decision but what we will continue to do is because there is a proposal out there that is bipartisan, that is would deal with what the challenges that we’re seeing at the border. We think it’s important,” KJP said. Watch the back-and-forth below:
She continued her long-winded answer, “It was supported by the US Chamber of Commerce, the Border Patrol unions. It is a bipartisan again, proposal that we think would be tough and fair. We want to see Congress move forward with it. And so we’re going to continue to call for that. But as as it relates to what we’re looking at, we’re always looking at options that just don’t have anything we’re always going to evaluate our options which don’t have anything to share. We haven’t made a decision.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
"*" indicates required fields