Obama Heading To Texas For Fundraisers But Won’t Visit Border

Despite the ongoing law enforcement and humanitarian crisis, President Barack Obama apparently won’t be personally reviewing the situation at the southwest border when he visits Texas next week.

Obama is traveling to the Lone Star state to raise campaign cash at three events for fellow Democrats running for office.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them accompanied or unaccompanied minors and young adults, have flooded into the border region from Central America and have stretched Border Patrol resources to the breaking point. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has invited the president to tour the border with him, but has received no response.

According to White House press secretary Josh Earnest, no first-hand visit is on the agenda. “There is no plan to visit the border while [Obama] in Texas. This president is obviously very attuned to what’s happening at the border. The president is getting regular updates on the situation.”

Earnest added that “there are a whole range of senior officials in this administration over the course of the last three or four weeks who have spent a lot of time in the southwest border… The president has a very good sense of what’s happening on the border. He’s getting regular updates from his officials who have traveled to that region.”

The president’s approval rating for his handling of immigrations issues has taken a big hit according to a recent poll.

As The Inquisitr previously reported, Border Patrol agent Hector Garza from the Laredo, Texas, sector claimed in a CNN interview that the federal government is “aiding and abetting and facilitating” human trafficking that is being “orchestrated” by drug cartels. He noted that many of these aliens immediately surrender to the Border Patrol because they know they will get a free pass into the U.S..

Obama critics have claimed that the president’s prior decision without the approval of Congress to suspend deportations of large numbers of younger illegals is a motivating factor in this crisis. The president has more recently announced that he will invoke additional unilateral executive orders with respect to illegal immigration. The Los Angeles Times reports that less than 2,000 illegal aliens under age 18 were deported in the year 2013.

Immigration authorities have been transporting immigrants from this latest wave of border crossers around the country sometimes in a haphazard manner.

Many observers believe that deportations will never occur, despite some vague assurances by Obama administration officials that the migrants will be returned to their home countries.

Agent Garza noted that many of the illegal immigrants are released from overcrowded detention centers on a promise to appear for a later immigration hearing. Many never report back, he explained. According to the Washington Examiner, “Ninety percent of the mostly-teen illegal immigrants flooding over the Mexico-U.S. border won’t show up for their immigration court hearing, meaning at least 135,000 of the youths will simply vanish into the country this year alone.”

Garza also explained that 70 percent of Border Patrol agents in his sector are being reassigned to processing duties for these newcomers, leaving our southern border undefended from “dangerous criminals and dangerous drugs.” Other wrongdoers who seek to harm the U.S., such as international terrorists, could also take advantage of a porous border. There have also been reports that gang members affiliated with MS-13 and other violent groups are crossing the border in this wave, and officers have no choice but to release them as well.

Many among this surge of immigrants will wind up on public assistance, i.e., collecting welfare, Garza insisted: “How do you expect a mother from Honduras that is crossing the country with three to five children, and they’re all young-aged children, how do you expect for that mother who comes to this country to actually begin working? This illegal alien who comes to this country with three to five kids is gonna depend on our welfare system, on government assistance. And you know what? That is costing the taxpayer a lot of money.”

The Obama administration claims that the current immigration crisis at the Rio Grande Valley caught it by surprise, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly posted a job description back in January for “escort services for unaccompanied alien children.”

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) said on CNN today that the Obama administration is “one step behind” and that federal officials “should have seen this coming a long time ago.”

The president has not yet responded to House Speaker John Boehner’s call to deploy the National Guard in the borderlands. Most countries around the world will take the necessary steps to secure their borders, including militarizing them. Not that we should emulate Saudi Arabia necessarily, but the Saudis have reportedly deployed 30,000 soldiers to its 500-mile Iraq border, given the chaos in that country.

When it comes to other scandals and controversies engulfing the administration, the president or his advisors have often claimed that they only found out about it by reading or hearing the news.

Against this backdrop, some pundits have even come to the conclusion that Obama has checked out of the job of serving as the nation’s 44th president:

A long article in Politico about the atmospherics of the second term notes that “the Obamas are taking fuller advantage of the perquisites of the office… Obama has been hosting star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight… He’s playing golf more than any other year, replacing basketball as his go-to sport, partly because of concerns about getting injured…”

According the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan, “… The president shows no sign — none — of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They’d be questioning what they’re doing wrong, changing tack. They’d be ordering frantic aides to meet and come up with what to change, how to change it, how to find common ground not only with Congress but with the electorate. Instead he seems disinterested, disengaged almost to the point of disembodied…”

Via the taxpayer’s dime, the first family has supposedly spent at least $44 million on travel and vacations, according to The Daily Caller, and that President Obama has reportedly spent more time traveling internationally than any other commander in chief in U.S. history.

Given the grave immigration crisis, do you think President Obama should adjust his schedule to make room for a visit to the southern border as well as inspecting overcrowded detention centers when he visits Texas this week?

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