TRANSCRIPT
More than 2 million illegal immigrants crossed into the United States through Mexico last year. That number doesn’t include those who evaded Border Patrol, but it does include countless unaccompanied children. Many of those minors were transported to Florida, where a war of words has erupted between the state’s top leader and the Sunshine State’s leading Catholic. Church Militant’s Kim Tisor explains.
The Catholic spokeswoman for Florida’s Catholic governor is going after archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, for twisting words.
Christina Pushaw asserted “lying is a sin” Tuesday, as a rebuke to an ad quoting Wenski, who during a press conference last week falsely accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of calling unaccompanied children crossing the southern border “disgusting.”
Abp. Thomas Wenski: “And he described that any comparison of unaccompanied minors from Cuba in the early ’60s with those from Central America today — he described them as disgusting. … Children are children, and no child should be deemed disgusting, especially by a public servant.”
But that’s not what DeSantis said. During a roundtable with Cuban supporters earlier this month, DeSantis refuted political adversaries’ comparisons of illegal minors pouring into the United States with Cuban children fleeing communism in the ’60s, calling those comparisons disgusting.
Gov. Ron DeSantis: “To equate what’s going on with the southern border with mass trafficking of humans, illegal entry, drugs, all this other stuff with Operation Pedro Pan, quite frankly, is disgusting.”
Wenski wants DeSantis to reverse an order he signed in September that suspends renewals of state licenses for shelters that take in unaccompanied children. DeSantis issued the order to stop the influx of illegal immigrants. He wants to deter any federal program from the Biden administration that prompts the smuggling of children without their parents.
In a NewsNation poll on immigration and border security released today, more than 1,000 voters were asked what makes immigration a bad thing. The top answers involved crime and the economy. More than 75% said immigration burdens welfare and social programs while nearly 58% responded it increases the risk of terrorism.