Seeking to distance herself from her party’s embrace of open borders, Arizona’s Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs told CNN that President Biden should visit the southern border to survey the impact of the immigrant crisis.
Hobbs told CNN that the president has not done “enough” to help border states deal with the burdens of the crisis, Breitbart reported.
Hobbs says Biden not doing ‘enough’
Those burdens include a spike in crime in border communities, Hobbs conceded.
“I don’t think they are doing enough. I would love to have them visit and see firsthand the kind of support and relief that folks in these communities need from the federal government,” Hobbs said.
Biden has never seen the border in his almost two years as president despite overseeing record-setting illegal immigration. Over 2 million illegal immigrants were encountered at the border in 2022.
While pushing back on Biden somewhat, Hobbs said that Democrats and Republicans share the blame for a problem that has lasted “decades.” She said that amnesty must be part of the solution.
“Arizona has certainly borne the brunt of decades of inaction from both parties in Washington,” Hobbs said. “We need real action on immigration reform. We need real border security.”
Democrats talk tough on the border
Asked what she would do differently from current governor Doug Ducey (R), Hobbs criticized the Republican for engaging in “political stunts,” such as using shipping containers to close gaps in the border and sending immigrants to sanctuary cities in protest of Biden’s agenda.
While Hobbs did not go into detail on what “real border security” looks like to her, she has said she would remove the shipping containers, which Ducey placed in defiance of Biden’s wishes.
During her campaign, Hobbs called Trump’s tough immigration policies “anti-immigrant” and called it “ridiculous” to discuss Title 42, a critical Trump-era border policy that Biden has fought to end.
At the same time, Hobbs has sought to distance herself from Biden’s border crisis, much like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly (D), who said in a recent interview that many Democrats “don’t understand our Southern border” while adding that Republicans “just want to talk about it.”
But talking is all that Hobbs and her partisan allies seem to be doing. If Hobbs is expecting Biden to do something about the border, she’s going to be waiting a long time.