The biggest threat to Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection is not the opposition GOP, but rather fellow Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
If Biden allows Democratic primary debates to take place, and as of early July, neither the president nor the DNC has indicated that they would permit them, Kennedy would have a direct opportunity to challenge the administration’s open border policy that has prevailed since Day One. Under normal circumstances, the incumbent’s party doesn’t hold primaries, but Kennedy is polling at 31 percent in a Newsweek poll taken among 2020 Biden voters, and a Washington Post-ABC poll found that 62 percent of Americans said they would be “dissatisfied” or “angry” if Biden were reelected.
Would-be voters who hope for a more above-board, democratic process got a rude awakening when the DNC rearranged the primary voting states. New Hampshire and Iowa, where Biden did poorly, were pushed back behind South Carolina which essentially sewed up the president’s nomination. For voters who think that the fix may be in, canceling debates and rescheduling primaries that favor Biden give credence to their suspicions.
Unlike Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the border czar, Kennedy has visited the border at hotspot Yuma, Ariz., a town with a population of fewer than 100,000 that is flooded with 6,000 migrants weekly. Officials in the border town say the unsustainable scenario has driven the community to the brink of collapse. Illegal crossers have created $22 million in unreimbursed hospital expenses, and the gotaways trapsing across pathogen-tested agricultural acreage endanger Yuma’s crops, valued at $4 billion annually.
Kennedy shared his first-hand Yuma experiences with Manchester, N.H.’s WMUR9, and brought to light facts, some gruesome, that have been hidden by the establishment media. Kennedy said that he expected to see mostly Central American crossers, but that the first busload was mostly military-age Africans from Senegal. More busloads included families from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Nepal, China, Pakistan and other countries. After a cursory interview with Customs and Border Protection, Kennedy watched illegal immigrants board airplanes provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. While he was in Yuma, Kennedy learned that pregnant migrants occupied 32 of the 35 available hospital beds. Local women have traveled to San Diego or Phoenix to have their babies delivered.
The cartels “control all the immigration,” Kennedy said, and “recognized a huge profit opportunity.” They communicate broadly via videos and social media to recruit people worldwide. The business-savvy cartels have lawyers who work with them in various countries to tell prospective recruits exactly what to do to get into the U.S.: get on a plane to Mexico City where the cartel will help secure a visa, and then get passage on an internal Mexicali-bound plane. Once at Mexicali, the cartel arranges for parking lots full of buses to take migrants on the final leg of their journey.
Meanwhile, for the 1 million-plus legal immigrants who arrive every year, and the millions more who have waited in line for years, Kennedy said that Biden’s border mess is “a stick in the eye.” For citizens who want to maintain a sovereign America, Kennedy stated the obvious: “No country can survive if it can’t control its borders.”
To emphasize the humanitarian crisis that Biden permits, if not encourages, Kennedy spoke of the “rape tree…where the cartels extract their final payment from women who come across.” Human traffickers hang the undergarments of women and young girls as a trophy display and challenge to other cartel members. Amnesty International reported that 60 percent of all women and girls trafficked north to be brought over the open U.S.-Mexican border are raped along the way. Parents send their minor-age girls off with morning-after pills, knowing that rape is probable.
In the end, Kennedy said that the border is “a humanitarian crisis that we’re creating through government negligence. And we need to end it for everybody’s sake.” Assuming Kennedy were to make immigration a campaign focal point, a logical conclusion given what he saw at the border, Biden would have little to say in defense of his persistent disregard for immigration law, as U.S. communities like Yuma have paid the price for his disdain.
Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst.