On Thursday, Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-50) outlined numerous, clear and repeated false statements by Biden Administration officials detailing agreements purportedly struck with Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras:
Issa said:
“For weeks, the Biden Administration has offered misleading and incomplete statements to defend the border crisis that it created at warp-speed and that runs along half the country. This week, it went even further by claiming it had reached bilateral agreements that did not exist and achieved diplomatic breakthroughs that did not occur with Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to mobilize forces and prevent further illegal migration to the United States.”
“This is quite simply the largest lie of the Biden Administration and one of the most willful foreign policy falsehoods uttered by an administration in decades. What the White House has produced is a crisis of confidence and a credibility gap. It is time to stop the lying and begin the process of full transparency and accountability.”
“As a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I am requesting a meeting of the full body, and hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle appreciate the seriousness of the next steps we should take,” said Issa.
Background
On April 12, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki read from prepared notes and announced “a series of bilateral discussions between our leadership and the regional governments of Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. Through those discussions, there was a commitment … to increase border security.” This generated media reports in every major outlet in the nation.
Presidential aide Tyler Moran added: “We’ve secured agreements for them to put more troops on their own border. Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala have all agreed to do this.”
The Guatemalan and Honduran governments, however, have declared in no uncertain terms that no such agreements were negotiated, agreed to, or put into place.
On April 14, while testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Biden Administration Special Envoy for the Northern Triangle Ricardo Zúñiga said, “there are no new agreements.”
Photo by Megan Wood/Voice of San Diego
