Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told Newsmax on Wednesday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took his advice and sent migrants who entered the U.S. illegally from the southern border to sanctuary cities.
Speaking with "Rob Schmitt Tonight" about the arrival of migrants on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Cruz said: "You know, this idea is one that I proposed a year ago.
"A year ago, I introduced legislation that we should be sending our illegal immigrants to places like Martha's Vineyard, to places like Nantucket and Palo Alto, California, and Cupertino, California, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where Joe Biden vacations."
Cruz said that when he introduced the legislation, officials in those jurisdictions "reveled in it. Actually, the county executive in Martha's Vineyard last year said that they would 'welcome illegal immigrants.' ... He said he wanted Martha's Vineyard to be a 'haven' for them."
Cruz reflects that the Martha's Vineyard county executive told him that the Texas senator "'has no idea what he's talking about. There is no border crisis.'"
"I'm very glad," Cruz said. "Shoutout to Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis; they both took my advice. They put illegal immigrants on planes, and they sent them to Washington, D.C., and New York and Chicago and now Martha's Vineyard, and it was amazing: 50 illegal immigrants arrive in Martha's Vineyard, and these blithering hypocrites within minutes declare a crisis — declare an emergency. They lose their minds with 50 of them."
Cruz then pointed out that the number of migrants who arrived on Martha's Vineyard was paltry compared with the sum crossing the southern border.
According to Customs and Border Protection data, the number of Southwest land border encounters for fiscal 2022 has exceeded that of 2021. In 2021, the total number of encounters was 1,734,686. But for 2022, the data, which goes only to August, indicates that the number of encounters so far has totaled 2,150,639.
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