ABC’s Martha Raddatz Blames Border Crisis On GOP, Falsely Claims Biden Never Told Migrants To Come

ABC News host Martha Raddatz falsely claimed during a segment that aired on Sunday that President Joe Biden never encouraged migrants to come to the U.S. in recent years as she appeared to pin the border crisis on Republicans.

Raddatz made the remarks during an interview on “This Week” with Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott while she toured the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, ‘we have an open border, come on over,’” she claimed. “But people I have heard say it are you, are former president Trump, are Ron DeSantis, that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they do get the message that it’s an open border and smugglers use all those kind of statements.”

While on the presidential campaign trail in 2019, Biden told migrants “you should come” to the U.S.

Abbott responded, “It was known from the time that Joe Biden got elected that Joe Biden supported open borders. It is known by the cartels who have sophisticated information whether or not the Biden administration is going to enforce the immigration laws or not is known across the world but most importantly, known among the cartels.”

WATCH:

ABC’s @MarthaRaddatz blames Repubs for “open border” message: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say ‘we have an open border, come on over,’ but people I have heard people say it are you (@GregAbbott_TX), are former President Trump, are Ron DeSantis…” #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/Zmp5iHDJP8

— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 (@BrentHBaker) December 18, 2022

TRANSCRIPT:

MARTHA RADDATZ, HOST: We joined Governor Greg Abbott of Texas as he surveyed the border this week. One of the Republican governors fighting to keep Title 42 in place, that Trump policy implemented at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic which allows the U.S. Government to immediately expel most migrants as a public health risk. Since March of 2020, it’s been used nearly 2.5 million times.

RADDATZ (on camera): What do you think happens next week when Title 42 comes to an end?

GREG ABBOTT, TEXAS GOVERNOR (R): If the courts don’t intervene and put a halt of removal to the Title 42 it’s going to be total chaos.

RADDATZ: But how do you — how do you keep that in place? That is about COVID, that is about public health risk.

ABBOTT: Whether it’s COVID or some other issue, when you have people coming across the globe without knowing at all what their health status is, that almost by definition is a public health risk. There’s every reason to keep that in place.

RADDATZ: You’re talking about the flu, you’re talking about RSV. In fact, you’ve seen that people coming across, they were saying maybe one person a day with COVID. So how does a judge look at that and go, oh, it’s still a public health risk?

ABBOTT: But some do come across with COVID and no one knows exactly who comes across with COVID. These people are not tested when they come across the border and so who knows how many people have COVID, who knows what other type of disease they may have. The answer is nobody knows because nobody is testing them. 

…

RADDATZ: You have used your taxpayer dollars here in Texas to bus migrants out of here. You know people have looked at that and said that’s just a political ploy to bring attention on the backs of these migrants and some families and some very young children.

ABBOTT: The real reason behind it is because communities like Del Rio and Eagle Pass and others, they are having thousands of people dumped off into their communities, thousands of migrants, dumped off in their communities. They don’t have the capability of dealing with that vast number of migrants and I removed them to locations that self-identified as sanctuary cities that have the capability and the desire to help out these migrants and so that’s exactly what’s taken place.

RADDATZ: You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, we have an open border, come on over. But people I have heard say it are you, are former president Trump, Ron DeSantis, that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they do get the message that it’s an open border and smugglers use all those kind of statements.

ABBOTT: It was known from the time that Joe Biden got elected that Joe Biden supported open borders. It is known by the cartels who have sophisticated information whether or not the Biden administration is going to enforce the immigration laws or not is known across the world but most importantly, known among the cartels.

RADDATZ: And how do you play into that? What can you do better?

ABBOTT: So we have every level of government doing everything we can to prevent people from coming into the

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