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Perry Won't Back Away From Obama Border Conspiracy Theory

Rick Perry On Border Crisis This Week ABC 7/6/14 FULL INTERVIEW

Published on Jul 6, 2014 by Jim Browski [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE8ftHPYHECIi6fhlaHe16g , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE8ftHPYHECIi6fhlaHe16g/videos ]
Rick Perry On Border Crisis This Week ABC. Rick Perry appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and told cohost Martha Raddatz that he didn't believe President Barack Obama cared about his constitutional duty to secure the border, despite repeated questions from Raddatz about a 2008 law requiring immigrants from non-contiguous nations be allowed in the country.
"The rule of law requires the Constitution of the United States to secure the border, and we haven't done that," Perry alleged.
Raddatz pressed him on a Bush administration law requiring children from non-contiguous be handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services for placement; the Obama administration wants to change it to allow for speedy deportations instead.
"Isn't this a backlog in the courts?" She asked him. "Doesn't that have to be addressed first?"
"What has to be addressed is the security of the United States," Perry replied. "You know that, I know that, the President of the United States knows that. I don't believe he particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure. That's the reason there's been this lack of effort, this focus, this lack of resources."
Watch the clip above, via ABC News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MU__bKdIsw [with comments] [this YouTube as embedded]

by Ryan J. Reilly
Posted: 07/06/2014 11:16 am EDT Updated: 07/06/2014 11:59 am EDT

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is not backing away from a conspiracy theory he recently floated about the Obama administration somehow coordinating the surge of immigrants coming over the border for some unknown reason.

Perry recently suggested on Fox News that the Obama administration might be "in on this somehow" and helping move immigrants over the border. Asked about that statement on Sunday, Perry didn't back away.

"I have to believe that when you do not respond in any way, that you are either inept, or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from," Perry said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

Perry didn't elaborate on what that "ulterior motive" might be or how the Obama administration would be politically helped by more immigrants coming over the border. Perry also said he wanted the Federal Aviation Administration to allow for drones to be used on the border.

Copyright ©2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/rick-perry-border_n_5561436.html [with comments]


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Rick Perry Claim On Obama Border Security Fails Fact Check

[ http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2013/apr/25/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-he-awaits-answer-barack-obama-augu/ (next below)]

04/29/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/rick-perry_n_3177452.html [with comments], http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/04/texmessage-pants-on-fire-for-perrys-claim-that-obama-ignored-letter-on-border-security/ [no comments yet]


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Rick Perry says he awaits answer from Barack Obama to August 2010 letter on border security


Says he has "yet to get a response" from Barack Obama to his August 2010 letter making border security requests.
--Rick Perry [ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/rick-perry/ ] on Friday, April 5th, 2013 in an interview on CNN.

The Truth-O-Meter Says:


April 25, 2013

Gov. Rick Perry says his 2010 plea to President Barack Obama for border security help remains unanswered.

Perry made the appeal to Obama in August 2010 when they met on the airport tarmac in Austin, where Obama was visiting for the day. The governor mentioned the airport meeting when he appeared on CNN’s "The Situation Room" on April 5, 2013.

Perry said "the president hadn't called up the governor of one of the largest states who has the longest border with Mexico and said, ‘Governor, what do you think we need to do about the issue of immigration?’ I would be open to that conversation any day."

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer replied: "So if he calls you, are you ready to go to the White House and sit down with the president and try to come up with some sensible solutions to comprehensive immigration reform?"

"Absolutely," Perry said. "As a matter of fact, I handed him a letter some two or three years ago on the tarmac at the Austin airport about that issue, about border security. And yet to get a response."

At the Aug. 9, 2010, airport encounter, caught on TV cameras, Perry and Obama chatted for less than a minute, according to news stories. Perry ultimately handed his letter on border security to a White House aide, Valerie Jarrett.

In the letter, Perry said he was renewing his invitation for the president and federal officials to meet with Texas officials on security issues. In addition, the letter urged federal drones to be flown along the border and mentioned Perry’s unfulfilled "standing request" for 1,000 National Guard troops to work with Texas law enforcement on security operations. Noting the Obama administration’s recently announced plans to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the border, Perry’s letter said the "deployment of just 286 National Guard personnel along the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border is clearly insufficient."

We asked Perry’s office about the governor not hearing back from Obama. By email, spokesman Josh Havens said: "We are still waiting on a response from President Obama."

Then again, Perry fielded a White House response at the time.

Havens simultaneously emailed us a copy of an Aug. 27, 2010, letter to Perry signed by John O. Brennan, then assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. In May 2013, Brennan was sworn in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Brennan’s letter, on White House letterhead, opened: "Thank you for your August 9, 2010, letter to President Obama regarding security concerns on our Southwest border. On behalf of President Obama, I wish to assure you that we understand your concerns and appreciate your outreach."

Brennan’s letter further said that securing the border had been an Obama priority. The letter did not embrace any of Perry’s requests, but noted that a few days after his Austin stop, Obama signed the Southwest Border Security Act into law, enabling the "addition of substantial and varied law enforcement resources to enhance security on our southern border." As an example, the letter said, additional National Guard troops and "other security resources" would serve. "It is anticipated that Texas will have over 20 National Guardsmen serving as criminal investigative analysts in fusion centers and over 225 Guardsmen conducting ground surveillance," in National Entry Identification Teams the letter said.

The letter closed: "We are united in our common interest and focused efforts to secure the Southwest border. Your continued engagement and partnership on this national security imperative is much appreciated."

We emailed the White House and Department of Homeland Security on this topic and did not hear back. We also asked Havens if the governor responded to Brennan’s letter, and we filed an open-records’ request asking the governor’s office for border-related communications between the state and White House since Perry and Obama visited on the tarmac. No materials came our way in the first few days after we submitted the request.

Our ruling:


Perry said he had "yet to get a response" to his 2010 letter to Obama requesting border security steps.

That’s not so. Perry fielded a reply to his letter from a White House deputy about three weeks after the airport howdy. We grant that it might not have contained the answers Perry sought, but saying Perry has yet to get any response strikes us as both inaccurate and ridiculous.

Pants on Fire!

© 2013 PolitiFact.com

http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2013/apr/25/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-he-awaits-answer-barack-obama-augu/


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Rick Perry Renews Calls For National Guard At U.S.-Mexico Border

By Jon Herskovitz
Posted: 07/03/2014 8:15 pm EDT Updated: 07/04/2014 11:59 am EDT

AUSTIN, Texas, July 3 (Reuters) - Texas Governor Rick Perry and a key U.S. lawmaker renewed Republican calls on Thursday for National Guard troops to be sent to the U.S.-Mexico border to help stem a surge of Central American nationals entering the United States illegally.

Perry addressed members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security at a field hearing at McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the region hardest hit by the thousands of children and families who have streamed to the border in recent months.

He said Texas expects to spend an extra $1.3 million a week through the end of the year to beef up law-enforcement efforts to deal with the crisis, on top of $500 million that he said Texas has spent since 2005 to help secure the border.

"The rapid influx of illegal immigrants has strained border resources that were already insufficient to the task at hand," said Perry, who is considered a possible 2016 Republican presidential contender.

More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been caught trying to sneak over the U.S.-Mexico border since October, double the number from the same period the year before. Thousands more have been apprehended with parents or other adults.

U.S. immigration officials say the humanitarian crisis is being driven by a mix of extreme poverty, gangs and drug violence in Central America, as well as rumors perpetuated by human smugglers that children who reach the U.S. border will be allowed to stay.

Detention and processing facilities in Texas have been inundated, leading U.S. immigration authorities to begin sending some of the immigrants to overflow sites elsewhere in the Southwest to help screen and manage the surge.

Perry called for deploying 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to assist with immigration enforcement while more U.S. Border Patrol agents are trained.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, also urged President Barack Obama to immediately dispatch National Guard forces "to free up Border Patrol agents so they can perform their primary mission, and that is securing the border."

Democrats have previously balked at similar Republican demands, saying merely putting more boots on the ground would be of little use. Critics say few of the migrants seek to avoid capture and instead arrive ready to surrender to border agents.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest shrugged off criticism from Perry that the Obama administration has done too little to deter illegal immigration.

He suggested that Perry instead lobby his party to support enactment of a sweeping immigration overhaul bill that has stalled in the Republican-controlled House after it was approved last year by the Democratic-led Senate.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Also contributing to this report were Steve Holland in Washington and Marty Graham in San Diego; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)

Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/04/rick-perry-border_n_5556685.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Jeh Johnson: U.S. Border Not Open To Illegal Entry, But 'We Have To Do Right By The Children'


WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 24: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson appears before a House Homeland Security Committee on Capitol Hill, June 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. The committee is hearing testimony on the growing problem of unaccompanied children crossing U.S. borders
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Posted: 07/06/2014 1:26 pm EDT Updated: 07/06/2014 2:59 pm EDT

WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) - A top U.S. official said on Sunday the U.S. border is not open to illegal entry into the country, but acknowledged the government does need to be sensitive to the tens of thousands of migrant children flowing into detention centers.

More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been caught trying to sneak over the U.S.-Mexico border since October, double the number from the same period the year before. Thousands more have been apprehended with parents or other adults.

"We have to do right by the children, but at the end of the day, our border is not open to illegal migration and we will stem the tide," Jeh Johnson, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Johnson said that the government administers deportation proceedings to illegal migrants seized at the border, including children. But he added that the government is looking at being more flexible toward the children seized at the border.

"We are looking at ways to create additional options for dealing with the children, in particular, consistent with our laws and our values," Johnson said.

Johnson repeated the stance, taken by President Barack Obama last week, that the president would take executive action to revamp the U.S. immigration system.

"There are a number of things the president and I, within the confines of existing law, can do to fix the broken immigration system. If Congress doesn't act, we will," Johnson said.

Johnson would not answer a question on the Sunday show pertaining to whether the U.S. government would deport the current wave of Central American children, saying only that U.S. authorities would stem the tide, and that deportation processes are commenced against illegal immigrants.

U.S. immigration officials say the crisis is being driven by a mix of extreme poverty, gangs and drug violence in Central America, as well as rumors perpetuated by human smugglers that children who reach the U.S. border will be allowed to stay.

Critics say that the Obama administration has not moved quickly enough to address the problem.

Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose congressional district includes a stretch of the Texas-Mexico border, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program that 48,000 people, including 9,700 children traveling without parents, were detained on the Texas border in May.

"We should have been ready for this surge," he said. "The administration should have been ready ... They should have seen this coming a long time ago."

Idaho Representative Raul Labrador, a Republican, said the U.S. needs to take a strong stance against what is happening at border facilities.

"The thing that the administration needs to do is immediately deport these families, these children. I know it sounds harsh, I know it sounds difficult, but they're creating a crisis that's going to harm these children," he said on "Meet the Press."

Labrador added that the frustration building up is because the administration is doing nothing about border security. (Reporting by Michael Flaherty; Editing by Jim Loney and Frances Kerry)

Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/jeh-johnson-border_n_5561692.html [with comments]


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Bolivia Passes Law To Allow 10-Year-Olds To Work


'El Chino' works repairing tyres in a street of La Paz on May 7, 2014.
(AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images)

Posted: 07/05/2014 9:49 am EDT Updated: 07/05/2014 9:59 am EDT

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia's Congress has passed legislation to allow children as young age 10 to work as long as it does not interfere with their education and is done independently to help the child's family make ends meet.

The legislation otherwise lowers the legal working age to 12 — again, as long the job does not interfere with the child's education.

A regional official with the U.N. International Labor Organization, Carmen Moreno, says the legislation passed Wednesday night would make Bolivia the first country to make work by 10-year-olds legal.

Moreno called the legislation worrisome considering that Bolivia is a signatory a U.N. convention that sets 14 as the minimum age for child labor.

The Bolivian legislation is expected to be signed into law shortly by President Evo Morales.

© 2014 Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/05/bolivia-child-labor_n_5559784.html [with comments]


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