Florida Representative Maxwell Frost is the son of Cuban refugees and the issue of immigration, he says, is especially important to him. Frost was elected to represent the 10th District, which includes Winter Park, Oak Ridge and Orlando — yet despite representing the home of Disney’s Magic Kingdom — Maxwell hopes to focus his work on reality, not fantasy.
The Washington, DC translation of this phrase is a focus on policy, not politics.
Frost states that when politicians use border issues and rhetoric about the changing of “American culture” to stoke fear of immigrants and fear of change, it’s something he “takes personally.” Frost is talking about certain GOP members of Congress who describe President Joe Biden’s immigration policies as having created what they describe provocatively and disingenuously as an “open border.”
MUST WATCH >>@MaxwellFrostFL: When President Biden took office, did your agents stop enforcing the border and just allow everybody to come in, thus creating what we hear here is an open border?
— Ian Sams (@IanSams46) February 7, 2023
Border chief: The answer is no. pic.twitter.com/BwCZ19CCNC
In an effort to find out whether these claims of an open border are true, Frost goes to sources who should know. See below an exchange between Frost and Border Security Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Sanchez, in which Frost puts to her question about whether Biden’s Oval Office tenure has created a more porous border.
Frost asks Sanchez directly: “When President Biden took office, did your agents stop enforcing the border and just allow everybody to come in, thus creating what we hear here is an open border?”
Sanchez replies: “Sir, thank you for your question. The answer is no, sir. We continue to enforce policy and laws.”
Frost then puts the same question to John Modlin, Chief Patrol Officer, Tucson Section, U.S. Customs & Border Protection. Modlin replies that this is the “fifth administration I’ve worked for, starting with the Clinton administration, and border agents do their job every day.”
Frost laments that “posturing” won’t work to fix the border issues, which are real, but that the work needs instead to be about “solutions and, for me, solutions must be rooted in facts.”
Frost starts with this fact, which he turned up by asking the people who have boots on the ground at the border: The border under Biden, according to these two chief patrol officers, is not “open.” Major boder issues remain, but they can only be addressed by starting with a baseline of facts.
