Republican Senator Mitt Romney had no sympathy for Democratic leaders in cities and states around the country on Thursday after news broke of GOP governors stepping up efforts to bus groups of migrants to their jurisdictions.
The campaign, begun by Texas’s Greg Abbott and now joined by Florida’s Ron DeSantis, aims to embarrass the Biden administration by taking the issue of immigration enforcement into state hands. Over the past several months, the governors have found groups of undocumented migrants and enticed them with various means to accept bus rides, a dozen or so at a time, out of state to destinations unknown. The first buses of migrants from Texas arrived in front of Fox News’s headquarters in Washington, DC; recent efforts have expanded to included Chicago and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
In almost every case, right-leaning news outlets were tipped off or otherwise encouraged to cover the busings, illustrating the politial effort behind the governors’ plans.
On Thursday, Senator Romney defended the campaign in a gaggle with reporters in the Capitol and despite questions about the destinations of the bus convoys (and the fact that leaders in those states or cities were not notified), denied that there was any political motivation behind the campaign.
“I can’t speak for a particular location but I can speak to the the idea of dispersing individuals that are here illegaly beyond one or two states,” the Utah Republican said.
“Right now, Arizona and Texas and a few others take the whole burden, and other states ought to take their fair share,” he continued.
Asked about the highly-publicised busings this week to Martha’s Vineyard, an upper-class island retreat off of Massachusetts’s coast, Mr Romney dismissed the idea that even that destination could be meant to embarrass Democratic leaders, and not actually a productive use of state resources.
“That’s not far from other parts of the state,” he said of the wealthy summer colony which is physically detached from the continental United States.
But then he relented: “It probably makes a pretty powerful point, which is political, which is the fact that we haven’t secured our border ... and it’s nuts.”
The responses by the Utah senator and former Massachusetts governor, frequently willing to break with his own party on issues like the impeachment of Donald Trump but less so on policy, illustrates how deep the divide is between Democrats who favour significant reforms to the asylum process and the immigration system as a whole, and Republicans who at this point are largely only willing to support more funding for border security and physical barriers at the southern border.
Just a few years ago, senators in Congress had formed a bipartisan committee on the issue of immigration reform and were discussing the possibility of passing legislation supported by both parties that included a path to citizenship for undocumented persons. That politcal reality seems far off now, with the new Republican Party taking a harder line on the issue than ever and frequently devolving into language that echoes far-right “replacement theory”, a connection they fiercely deny.
Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, have yet to comment on the busings while condemning them through press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“[W]e believe it’s shameful that some governors are using migrants as a political tool, as a political play, when we should be making sure that we’re doing everything that we can to help folks who are coming into this process in a legal way and making sure that we do this in a safe way and respectful way. And I think it is shameful that that is happening,” she said in July.
