Trump’s Border Crisis Is Disingenuous, Nonexistent, Say Dems as They Tour Border Facilities

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. - Facing a deepening national drama over funding for a border wall, a group of Democratic congressional leaders took aim at President Donald Trump on Monday, calling him disingenuous and the manufacturer of a “crisis” where there is none.The Democrats, led by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said they expect Trump to be dishonest when he addresses the American public Tuesday evening and later head for the Texas border this week in an effort to drum up support for the wall he promised his base during his presidential campaign, a pledge that’s dogged him and the country in the two years of his presidency.“I expect he will lie to the American people. Why do I expect that? Because he has been lying to the American people and his spokespeople people continue to be lying to the American people,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “There is no crisis on the border.... We certainly oppose any attempt by the president to make himself a king and a tyrant to appropriate money without Congress.”Nadler and other congressional members, including Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, joined the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Monday as part of a delegation touring the border patrol holding area here in Alamogordo where an 8-year-old Guatemalan, Felipe Alonzo Gomez, spent the last hours of his life. He is one of two Guatemalan children who died in U.S. custody in December.Merkley, a staunch critic of Trump’s policies on immigrants, including kids detained in a Tornillo, Texas, tent city, called the incident part of “Trump’s war on migrant children.”The ongoing drama comes in the third week of a government shutdown that Trump has said will not end until Democrats agree to allocate $5.7 billion for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump also said he might declare a national emergency to build the wall with other government funds if the Democrats do not go along with his promise.Trump supporter and Otero County Commissioner Couy Dale Griffin took issue with the congressional delegation, pressing them to address issues like Mexico’s drug cartels.“What about the cartels?” he shouted during the press briefing Monday to the delegation. He later said: “We’re being outsmarted, outgunned and outplayed by the cartels. The only way we can control it is with a barrier. What that consists of that can be debated.”Critics like Rep Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, called the Trump’s administration’s pledge an “obsession” to “hold the country hostage over a wall,” arguing that barriers have been going up and continuously upgraded since the post 9-11 period under George W. Bush administration in 2006.“We already have a wall and it’s on U.S. soil,” she said.Trump is headed to McAllen on Thursday to “meet with those on the frontlines of the national security and humanitarian crisis,” according to a tweet from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.  Continue reading...