Obama won't visit detention facilities holding thousands of illegal children (dumped on our doorstep) when he travels to Texas next week to fundraise for Democrats
The Daily Mail
(with some additions)
The Daily Mail
(with some additions)
By Francesca Chambers
Published: 17:18 EST, 3 July 2014 | Updated: 18:04 EST, 3 July 2014
• President Barack Obama is traveling to Texas next week to attend Democratic Party fundraisers
• While he's there he'll also meet with a supporter who wrote him a letter
• He won't visit the border to see any of the captured Central American children who are piling up in detention facilities, however
Captured ?
• The White House says he doesn't need to make a pit stop at the border because he's 'well aware' of the situation
He sure is...he created it
• White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said other administration officials who have been to the border are updating Obama on the situation, and that's how the president wants it to stay
The biggest threat to America?
When did our policy of deporting illegals switch to busing them to states stupid enough to take them?
This is an attack on the Constitution which Barry knows little about and respects even less.
What else do they have to do before they're thrown out of office?
President Barack Obama will meet with average Americans and hold fundraisers for Democratic candidates during his trip to Texas next week, but he will not visit detention facilities at the border housing thousands of illegal immigrant children, the White House said today.
The day after the Benghazi attack he went to a fundraiser in Las Vegas. Did you expect this to be any different?
Press Secretary John Earnest said the president is 'well aware' of the humanitarian crisis at the border and doesn't need to see it first-hand during his trip to the Lonestar State.
'The president has a very good sense of what's happening at the border,' Earnest said during his daily press briefing. 'He's getting regular updates from his officials who've traveled to that region. They're focused on solving this problem.'
'And what the president wants is ... regular reports about what they're seeing on the border, and how resources that are being devoted to processing these--those who have appeared at the border, are being used to effectively administrate justice.
Ain't nobody got time for that: President Barack Obama will hold fundraisers for Democratic candidates for Congress when he visits Texas next week but he doesn't plan to go see the humanitarian crisis on the border
The original impetus of the president's travel to Texas was a pair of Democratic National Committee fundraisers taking place on Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, which is located near the middle of the large southern state.
News outlets first began reporting the trip last weekend, and the White House confirmed earlier this week that Obama was in fact planning to appear at political events in the state.
The first fundraiser will take place at filmmaker Robert Rodriguez' home. Tickets to that event reportedly cost between $5,000 and $32,400.
The next day, Obama will participate in a roundtable discussion with progressive activist Aimee Boone Cunningham, assistant secretary of theCenter for Reproductive Rights. Admission to that event is also $32,400.
Obama is reportedly scheduled to attend a fundraiser in Dallas on the first day of his trip, as well.
Today the president will also participate in another 'Day in the Life' event, in which he meets face to face with someone who wrote him a letter. In this instance, Obama will meet with a Texas resident who sent the White House a message praising the president's economic policies.
He will not, however, make a pit stop at the border, Earnest said.
President Barack Obama made a surprise trip to tech startup hub 1776 this morning in Washington, D.C. to talk about about job growth and meet with young entrepreneurs.
The president's trip 1776 today was the latest in a string of attempts by the president to get out of the White House bubble
Questions about a potential presidential visit to the border first arose during the White House press briefing on Tuesday.
Asked whether Obama would visit the overcrowded detention facilities in the Rio Grande area during his upcoming visit to Texas so he could observe the humanitarian crisis with his own eyes, Earnest said, 'At this point, no,' Earnest said. 'But if there are any changes to the schedule we'll let you know.'
Earnest was again asked about Obama's plans on Wednesday, after Texas Governor Rick Perry invited the president to come visit the border in person during an appearance on Fox and Friends that morning.
'If he doesn't come to the border, I think it's a real reflection of his lack of concern of what's really going on there,' Perry said.
'If the President of the United States is really serious about securing that border, we can show him how to do that,' the former Republican presidential candidate said.
'But I haven't even had a phone call from this president.'
On Wednesday Earnest said Obama still had no plans to visit the border but he 'wouldn't rule it out until the day of.'
'Our focus at this point is to plan to do something else,' he said.
Likewise, Earnest, 'the most important thing' people like Perry could do 'is not offer public invitations but actually to lend their public support to comprehensive immigration reform.'
The White House official also explained that the president doesn't need to travel to the border because other senior administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Director of White House Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz, have recently traveled to the border.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest got hammered with questions from reporters today about the president's upcoming trip to Texas and his decision not to visit the border while he's there
Last weekend House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other members of the president's party made the trek to the border to stand in solidarity with the immigrant children and show their support for immigration reform.
Johnson and Burwell were just in McAllen, Texas, on Monday to speak with border patrol officers and receive an update on the federal government's efforts to feed, clothe, house and treat the overpowering number of unaccompanied minors being held in the area's detention facilities.
Last week, Johnson visited illegal immigrant children being held at Nogales, Arizona, detention centers.
'So this is something that the administration is paying very close attention to,' Earnest said during yesterday's briefing. 'The President is getting regular updates on this situation.'
'This President is obviously very attuned to what's happening at the border,' he said at another point.
After a reporter asked if Earnest was 'comfortable with the optics of the President going for fundraisers only and not taking an eyeball look himself on the border?' Earnest said Obama's trip would 'include some activities other than just building some support for Democratic candidates for office who are on the ballot in November.'
Obama's trip came up a third time during today's briefing to Earnest's chagrin.
The newly minted senior administration official first repeated previous statements about Obama's travel schedule, and then said: 'I think the reason that some people are suggesting the reason the president go to the border when he's in Texas is because they'd rather play politics than actually try to address some of these challenges.'
'If they were committed to solving the problem, you know, for example in the case of the Texas Governor, he could probably be pretty useful, I hear he's a pretty persuasive fellow, that he could pick up the phone, and call up some of those Republican members of Congress from Texas who are standing foursquare against common sense immigration reform,' Earnest said a few minutes later.
'If the governor were genuinely concerned about solving so many of these problems that exist on the border, the most impactful thing he could do right now, is encourage those Republican members of the House of Representatives to stop blocking common sense legislation from coming to the floor of the House of Representatives.'
The president's comprehensive immigration reform legislation passed in the Senate last summer, but
House Speaker John Boehner has refused to bring it to the House floor.
Boehner has said that he will not introduce immigration legislation until the president agrees to a step-by-step approach instead.
Texas. Gov. Rick Perry shakes hands with Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sgt. Johnny Hernandez after touring the McAllen Border Patrol station on Monday
President Obama is one of the only a few high-profile Washington officials who hasn't visited the border since news outlets began reporting on how poorly the unaccompanied minors coming to the U.S. were being treated in detention facilities.
Pictures of children sleeping in piles on the floor without mattresses or blankets caused an uproar, and the Obama administration had to act suddenly to resolve the situation.
The president announced more than $250 million in new aid to the Central American countries from which the kids are primarily migrating from and sent both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry to to speak with leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras about the importance of shutting down the criminal networks that are smuggling children in through the U.S. border with Mexico.
On Monday the president announced that he was using his executive authority to direct the Homeland Security to 'refocus' its resources from the interior of the country to its Southern border.
The president himself is yet to meet in person with Central American leaders or any of the 52,000 children who fled their home countries to come to the U.S. in the last year.
Today, members of the House Homeland Security took a field trip to McAllen to hear from Perry and Texas law enforcement officials.
During the field hearing, which took place on the campus of South Texas College, Perry asked the government to pay back Texas the $500 million his state had spent since 2005 on border security efforts.
'We have been fulfilling a federal responsibility,' Perry said. 'The hardworking people of the state of Texas shouldn't be shouldering that cost.'
The Texas Governor also called on the president to send 1,000 National Guard members to his state to help secure the border.
'The power of boots on the ground cannot be overstated,' Perry said.
'The message needs to be not, "If you come into the United States, you'll be deported," but, "You won't enter the United States."
The president said last week that he would send more border patrol agents to Texas, but he's ignored multiple requests from Republican officials to deploy the National Guard.
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