Perry: Obama either ‘inept’ or has ‘ulterior motive’ for border failure

Statesman – by Jonathan Tilove

Gov. Rick Perry said Sunday that President Obama doesn’t care if the southern border is secure and that his failure to anticipate and stem the tide of Central American children entering the country indicates he is either “inept” or has an “ulterior motive.”

“What has to be addressed is the security of the border. 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. And that’s the reason there’s been this lack of effort, this lack of focus, this lack of resources.” Perry said on ABC’s “This Week.”  

In an interview last month with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Perry suggested that the Obama administration had wilfully failed to contend with the mounting border crisis.

“We either have an incredibly inept administration, or they’re in on this somehow or another,” Perry said. “I mean I hate to be conspiratorial, but I mean how do you move that many people from Central America across Mexico and then into the United States without there being a fairly coordinated effort?”

On “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz asked Perry, “Governor, do you really believe there’s some sort of conspiracy to get people into the United States by the federal government, by the Obama administration?”

“When I have written a letter that is dated May of 2012, and I have yet to have a response from this administration, I will tell you they either are inept or don’t care, and that is my position,” Perry said. “We have been bringing this to the attention of President Obama and his administration since 2010, he received a letter from me on the tarmac.”

“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,” said Perry. “So the issue is, this president understands now that we have a huge problem on our southern border. We have to deal with it. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to address it until you put the resources there, and that’s boots on the ground. We’re asking for the FAA to allow for drones to be used.”

“Unless we secure our southern border, this is going to continue to be a massive amount of individuals that are coming to the United States,” Perry said. “And, frankly, we don’t have a place to house them as it is. And if we have a major event, a hurricane that comes in to the Gulf Coast, I don’t have a place to be housing people who are displaced.”

President Obama will be in Texas Wednesday and Thursday for national Democratic fund-raisers in Dallas and Austin, where, on Thursday, he will also offer remarks on the economy. But he does not plan to visit the border to see the situation first-hand while in Texas.

“If he doesn’t come to the border, I think it’s a real reflection of his lack of concern of what’s really going on there,” Perry said in a Fox interview Wednesday.

“If the President of the United States is really serious about securing that border, we can show him how to do that,” Perry said. “But I haven’t even had a phone call from this president.”

Asked Sunday on “Meet the Press” whether the president ought to travel to the border while in Texas, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said, “The president can’t be everyplace he’d like to be, or even should be. I know that the president receives daily updates from Lisa Monaco, his homeland security advisor on the White House staff, Cecilia Munoz, who is domestic policy director, on myself. I have regularly briefed the president in Oval Office meetings. And we’re doing the principal’s level meeting tomorrow morning.”

In a separate interview with “This Week,” Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said that Secretary Johnson “has just deployed an additional 150 agents to the Rio Grande Valley and that is on top of the 115 that are already moving in. So I’m confident that we have the resources.”

“He is absolutely and totally wrong,” Perry said. He said that there are 15 Border Patrol agents per mile from El Paso to California, and in Texas, it’s seven agents per mile.

“In 2010, I asked for the president to put 1,000 National Guard troops in place along the border to secure the border so that we could train up to 3,000 Border Patrol agents to augment and to permanently secure that border,” Perry said.

Perry testified at a field hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday in McAllen that the tens of thousands of children coming into Texas should be swiftly deported.

“Some might think allowing them to stay is a more humane option, I assure you, it is not,” Perry said. “Nobody is doing any of these children the slightest favor by delaying a rapid return to their countries of origin, which in many cases is not Mexico. Allowing them to remain here will only encourage the next group of individuals to undertake the same life-threatening journey.”

Perry was preceded on “This Week,” by the Most Rev. Mark Seitz, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, who was asked by Raddatz what he would say to the governor about the border situation.

“Well, I’d say to Governor Perry, I know that he is a compassionate man and I think we need to tune into that side of our personhood,” Seitz said.

“We know that there is great concern about people coming to our borders. We just need to find a way, first of all, to receive them according to existing laws that say we must receive people who are seeking asylum. In fact, they are not illegal if they are coming under those circumstances. And we need to look at the root causes, also, and see what we can do as a country to help the situation in Central America.”

“I think a helpful analogy for me is a house that’s burning and people at the windows ready to jump,” Seitz said. “We can say as many times as we want, don’t jump, help is coming, but if the flames begin licking at their backs, then they’re go to jump. And they’ll look for the safest place to land.,And that, I think, is what’s happening. Many of them do know that in the United States, there are people who would receive them. And that’s where they go.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/perry-obama-either-inept-or-has-ulterior-motive-fo/ngZdY/