WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rebuffed Sen. Ted Cruz’s invitation to visit the U.S.-Mexico border with him to witness migrants walking across — a familiar sight for news viewers that Jean-Pierre adamantly denied takes place.
“I’ve been to the border. I went in 2018. I stood outside facilities where the Trump administration was separating families, tearing babies out of their mother’s arms. Some of those kids still haven’t been reunited with their families, she said Tuesday when asked about the Texan’s invitation. “I certainly don’t need lectures or invitations from Republicans about the border or border policies.”
Cruz issued his invitation on his podcast, taking issue with Jean-Pierre’s comments pooh-poohing talk about migrants simply walking into the United States along the Southwest border.
“It is not that simple. It’s not just that people are walking across the border,” she asserted during her Aug. 29 briefing.
Fox reporter Peter Doocy had pressed her to explain why tennis star Novak Djokovic was barred from entering the United States because he has not been vaccinated against COVID-19, while thousands of migrants have crossed the Southwest without proof of vaccination or permission.
“Somebody unvaccinated comes over on a plane. You say that’s not OK. Somebody walks into Texas or Arizona unvaccinated, they’re allowed to stay? Why?” Doocy asked.
“But that’s not how it works,” Jean-Pierre said.
“That’s exactly what’s happening,” Doocy said. “Thousands of people are walking in a day. Some of them turn themselves over. Some of them are caught; tens of thousands a week are not.”
Cruz, in his weekend podcast, said Jean-Pierre had issued an “11 alarm, pants on fire” untruth and was either “deliberately lying” or “deliberately ignorant” about the situation at the border.
“If you believe it’s not happening, that people are walking across the border, Karine, I invite you. Come to Texas, come to the Rio Grande Valley, spend one hour on the border and I promise you, you and I will see dozens if not hundreds of people walking across the border,” he said. “You can come at 2 in the morning. You can come at noon. You will see them coming, because they are coming every single hour.”
Customs and Border Patrol’s most recent monthly data, for July, showed that federal authorities encountered 199,976 migrants who had crossed the Southwest border without permission, down 4% from June.
At the Republican National Committee, rapid response director Tommy Pigott called Jean-Pierre’s stance “absurd,” citing estimates as high as 800,000 “gotaways” — people who evaded authorities after crossing the border without permission — since President Joe Biden took office.
“Biden created this crisis. He needs more than a `lecture’ on the border, he needs to visit it,” Pigott said.
Jean-Pierre seemed unaware of the senator’s invitation when asked about it at her daily briefing Tuesday.
And rather than walk back her assertion about a lack of foot traffic along the border, she parried.
“While folks are sending invites I’ll use this opportunity to invite him or anyone else next time to vote for record funding for (homeland security) as President Biden has requested,” she said.
Cruz said on his podcast that the White House spokeswoman’s denial about migrants crossing the border on foot should rate a pants-on-fire denunciation from fact checkers.
He speculated rhetorically that reporters seated nearby when she made the comments feared a lightning strike.
“It is deeply disturbing to see the White House used as a vehicle for active disinformation,” Cruz said — a critique he never aired during the Trump administration, when fact checkers identified thousands of false statements.
The proliferation of Pinocchios under the last president, with whom Cruz was closely allied, rankled conservatives.
Cruz and other conservatives also denounce Biden, saying he has been soft on border security and has effectively opened the nation’s borders through lax enforcement. The White House disputes that, though for a variety of reasons, including an economic surge since the depths of the pandemic, illegal migration has hit record levels under Biden.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union that represents roughly 18,000 agents and support staff at the Border Patrol, has also taken issue with Jean-Pierre’s assertion.
“I watch these people walk across the border every single day. We see it. It’s disgusting what we’re seeing,” he said last week. “And she knows exactly what’s happening. But she’s deflecting. She’s lying.”
Jean-Pierre also blamed Trump-era policies for eight deaths last Thursday near Eagle Pass, Texas, where migrants were caught in heavy currents crossing the Rio Grande. It was the worst mass drowning in recent memory.
“We work very hard to secure the border and make sure that we don’t see those types of tragedies and heartbreaks,” she said. “The Department of Homeland Security is working very hard on continuing to secure our border, to do work that was not done in the past several years.”
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