The White House sought to shift the blame to Republicans on Friday when pressed on an incident at the U.S.–Mexico border one day earlier in which more than 100 migrants attempted to enter the country at once, including several men who attacked U.S. National Guard members amid the chaos.
Video of the incident published by the New York Post shows dozens of men breaking through razor-wire fencing that the state of Texas had installed before racing forward to overwhelm Texas National Guard members. However, the group was ultimately thwarted by a section of border wall.
Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what President Biden believes should happen to “adult men who are assaulting and overpowering U.S. National Guardsmen.”
“They were able to do their job even though Republicans, Governor Abbott in particular, has made it difficult for them,” Jean-Pierre said during the press briefing on Friday. “You have a governor, Governor Abbott, who is politicizing it.”
She went on to fault Senate Republicans for not supporting bipartisan border legislation, as the president has done himself many times in recent weeks, including during his State of the Union address. It is true that Senate Republicans voted against the bipartisan bill earlier this month, though opponents said it would normalize high levels of illegal immigration, and Biden elided the fact that his decision to rescind several Trump-era executive orders played a role in exacerbating the border crisis.
Doocy pushed again on Friday, saying, “This video does not show helpless women and children begging for a safe place to come in. It shows adult men landing haymakers on U.S. troops in uniform. If that was happening anywhere else in the world, wouldn’t President Biden send reinforcements?”
“The governor of Texas put the Texas National Guard there. We didn’t put them there. He put them there. What we need is actual real solutions,” she said, adding that border agents ultimately apprehended all of the migrants involved.
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris accused the Biden administration of performing “mental gymnastics” on the border crisis, saying in a statement to Fox News that the recent incident at the border was “the direct result of the unsustainable chaos President Biden has unleashed on the border.”
“Texas will continue to utilize every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies encourage migrants from over 150 countries to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry,” he added.
The latest incident at the border comes as Texas is fighting the Biden administration in court over a state law that would make illegal immigration a state crime.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect after a lower court previously paused enforcement of the policy — but hours later an appeal court once against blocked the law, known as S.B. 4.
The appeals court ruling effectively reinstated a decision from U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra, who found last month that the law conflicted with federal immigration laws and the Constitution.