Democrat Shames MAGA Senator, “We Aren’t Monsters”
Former President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) have publicly rejected the Senate bipartisan border security bill. Trump called it “terrible” and Johnson declared it “dead on arrival” at the House.
MAGA loyalist U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a former Missouri attorney general and graduate of the Yale Law School, is also an opponent of the bill. He criticized the deal on X, writing: “Did I mention this border bill gives taxpayer funded lawyers to illegal immigrants?”
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy (CT), who helped produce the bipartisan agreement, replied to Hawley: “Did you mention it’s just for unaccompanied children? You know, 8 year old kids fleeing violence or certain death, who arrive at our border alone, shivering and frightened, traumatized from the journey, not able to speak the language. We aren’t monsters. We should help them.”
Did you mention it's just for unaccompanied children?
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2024
You know, 8 year old kids fleeing violence or certain death, who arrive at our border alone, shivering and frightened, traumatized from the journey, not able to speak the language.
We aren't monsters. We should help them. https://t.co/NFbIM0iVB1
[NOTE: Hawley doesn’t, as Murphy points out, specifically address the plight of children — his objection more broadly targets how taxpayer funds are spent.]
The issue of how to deal with migrant children crossing the border has been especially challenging for authorities. In 2018, Hawley supported the Trump administration’s family separation policy, which “separated more than 2000 children from their parents at the border during the period of mid-April to June.”Â
Hawley said of the policy: “If people didn’t cross the border illegally this wouldn’t happen.” He added, “It is an entirely preventable tragedy: Don’t cross the border illegally and this won’t happen.”
Note: In 2018, after visiting the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where thousands of parents and their separated children were detained as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, American Bar Association (ABA) President Hilarie Bass “spoke out about the need for legal services to ensure they receive the due process to which they are entitled.”
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