Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who left the Democratic Party, says she is "livid" the sanctuary state of New York — inviting illegals to come stay — is getting more border funding than the actual border state of Arizona.
The reason, Sinema said, is none other than Democrat leaders — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — having outsized influence in Congress and driving the bigger dollars to their blue sanctuary state over Sinema's Arizona.
"It's fairly obvious: I don't know if you noticed, but the announcement about that $104 million came out first, in a joint press release from Schumer and Jeffries — not from the White House or from FEMA," Sinema told Politico. "The first news of it broke by their press release.
"Now, how did that happen?"
As $800 million gets dumped into housing illegal migrants, it is "important for people to know" why New York gets a larger piece of the funding than Arizona, particularly as New York has chosen to be a sanctuary state, while Arizona is left to deal with the migrants crossing the border to get to the Democrat-controlled U.S. locales that invite illegals.
Biden is now asking for $600 million more. Good luck getting that through after the New York favoritism, Sinema warned.
"Now that a yeoman's amount of this funding has gone to the interior of the country, not to border communities, that lift to get another tranche of this funding — to get more of it approved — is even heavier than before," Sinema told Politico. "To be clear: It was very heavy in December."
Sinema teamed with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to get that last $800 million passed, with Sinema arguing, "the communities that will suffer are the small border towns in South Texas and South Arizona."
But the Biden administration got the funding and used its discretion on where it would go. More than $100 million went to Democrat-controlled New York over Arizona.
"This is outrageous, how is this even happening?" Sinema told Politico, saying it was "deeply, deeply wrong."
Schumer and Jeffries were not shy about celebrating having put New York "front and center" on the $104.6 million, hailing "the largest share of the federal dollars released via the new Shelter Services Program we created," according to a June press release.
The border state Democrats are not taking kindly to playing second fiddle to a power-holder state that is a nexus for the flooding of the southern border.
"We secured this funding to relieve the burden on border communities and Customs and Border Protection facilities in our border states," Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., wrote in a statement. "The administration disregarded this when they awarded significantly more funding to New York City than overstretched border communities. This decision was wrong."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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