Pelosi on Immigration: Hungry People Are Fleeing Because of the Climate Issue and the Drought

REPORTER: “The latest border patrol report shows a deterioration of the border situation, more interdictions. Do you think Vice President Harris is in the best position to exert her presence there? To fix things?”

PELOSI: “Yeah. Well, first of all, let me just correct the record here. I don’t know what aspect of the border you’re talking about, but the record, the figures that came out in April showed that there was an 80% decrease of the number of children under the auspices of the border patrol, 6,000 something to 1,000 something. They had been moved out more expeditiously than before, because the Biden/Harris administration had reconstructed how we deal with the situation at the border. As I have said on the border three Rs, three Rs. What are the routes of this immigration? And that’s where the vice president has been tasked to, I don’t know, visit physically, but communicate directly with the governments of the Northern Triangle, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. I think she is very well suited to do that. Secondly, reconstruct. You had to deconstruct the horrible situation that the Trump administration had created at the border. Deconstruct it so you can reconstruct a better system, and they have. And the third is our friends the refugees. As I’ve said to you all before, you’ve heard it, you can repeat it I’m sure, because you’ve heard me say it over and over again, that when we had a hearing on this subject, the evangelicals said that the United States Refugee Resettlement Program is the crown jewel of American humanitarianism. This is something. I’m pleased that the president has raised the number of people who can come into our country. Every country has a moral responsibility to help those, excuse me, in fear of persecution or danger in their home country. So I think that did come up in our meeting yesterday, because I was mentioning that when I took a group, right before Covid, I don’t know, year and a half ago about, to the Northern Triangle, to the countries I mentioned, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Recognizing from previous visits to the border over and over again, that violence, economic hardship, that’s not a cause for amnesty, but nonetheless, a reason why somebody might leave home. Violence and corruption, all those things, were what were causing people to flee. But what I learned in that more recent visit was that the climate issue and the drought was having such an impact on the agricultural industry there, that people lost their livelihoods, they lost their jobs, they lost their ability to farm. And not only were they losing their ability to produce food, they were hungry themselves. So Madam Vice President said that she has engaged the Secretary of Agriculture to be part of that. So it’s vice president, I’m so proud of her, Vice President Harris, but with the resources of the Biden-Harris, but with the resources of the Biden-Harris administration, got to the root cause of it, reconstruct the system that was there so that it works better, and third, understand our responsibility to refugees, the three Rs. I will say in that conversation, the President was totally knowledgeable, chapter and verse, very concerned, and something I think that he deals with every day.”