Rep. Chip Roy Wallops GOP Lawmakers Over Migrant Crisis – Opinion

Many critics have been directed at President Joe Biden, his team of Democrats and their inept handling of the immigrant crisis. Both high-profile figures on each side of the aisle have criticized the White House’s inept management of this problem.

Unfortunately, it appears Republicans in Congress don’t seem too interested in finding ways to deal with the situation at the southern border, and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) isn’t too happy about it. It is the Washington Examiner reports that he is “circulating a letter among his Republican colleagues trying to garner support for forcing a House vote to reinstate certain Trump-era immigration policies.”

This is the Examiner

In a letter to his fellow Republicans, the Texas lawmaker said the conference “should stand together to thwart the Biden administration’s attack on our southern border” by forcing votes on a bill that would require enforcement of Title 42, an emergency public health order allowing officials to turn away migrants at the borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Roy wants to support a bill which would restore the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols. It allows certain migrants to continue living in Mexico until their asylum cases are resolved in the United States.

Roy’s colleagues don’t seem too interested in this particular course of action. The Examiner added:

Neither of Roy’s discharge petitions has received the requisite 218 signatures for the petitions that allow a minority party to force a vote in the House. At press time, Title 42 had 195 signatures and the Migrant Protection Protocols had 133.

In a telephone conversation, he called out the Examiner’s Republican Congress members who refused to sign the petitions. He stated:

“That’s the question that I want to ask all my colleagues: What in the hell precisely are you actually doing to try to secure the border?”

He continued:

“[A]bsolutely mind-boggling that the Republicans didn’t just say, ‘Well, yeah, let’s all sign a discharge petition to force a vote on Title 42,’ and then immediately start putting pressure on so-called moderate Democrats to say, ‘Why aren’t you doing it?’”

“Because all we need is 218 signatures,” the lawmaker added. “So, we need five more signatures. So, then, we go to the office of every Democrat who are now going to be in tough primaries and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you signing a discharge petition to make sure that our borders are secure?’”

When asked whether is just as easy to get every Republican representative to sign the petitions along with five Democrats, Roy responded: “Who cares?”

“What the point here is to call them out for it,” Roy continued. “It would be a really nice point to say, ‘Hey, we have 213 Republicans who are unanimously calling on a return to migrant protection protocols and Title 42. And Democrats plainly refused to do it.”

It Washington Examiner noted that this move “comes after a period of increased rancor within the Republican conference” in which “House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently told Republicans to not attack one another in public over personal or policy differences.”

It is interesting to note that McCarthy didn’t sign the Migrant Protection Protocols petition.

When asked if his calling out other Republicans for failing to sign the petition showed “discord” in the conference, he said:

“I’m not monolithically Republican. We just have to make sure the border is secure. I don’t care what your party label is. Let’s secure the dang border now. So, I’m not about infighting. But I’m going to hold myself and everybody accountable to do what we said we would do. Republicans often talk big and do not follow through. I’m over that.”

Roy’s response is spot on.

These debates between Republican circles must take place, as I have written previously. Issues such as these reveal who is really about advancing the conservative position – especially as it pertains to immigration. Anyone who has been a conservative for even a modicum of time knows that it is not only the Democrats who are the issue; it is also Republicans who pay lip service to being conservatives when they are actually Diet Democrats™. Sometimes these people are the worst.

Roy is doing the right thing here –- yes, it will likely not result in a vote forcing the Biden administration to restore Trump’s immigration policies, but it will expose those who are not invested in the interests of their constituents. It would have been useful information to provide for the voters in primary season.