Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of conservative Christian activists Saturday night at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's annual gala dinner that the Democratic policy goals relating to border security are "morally wrong" and would only enable the abuse and assault of migrants being trafficked to the southern border. Pence did not hold back in responding to a week filled with criticism of the Trump Administration following reports of unfavorable conditions facing migrants at the southern border. Pence suggested to donors of the leading national conservative evangelical grassroots organization that securing the southern border and building a wall is the morally appropriate response. He stated:
After spending the last six months denying there was a crisis at our southern border and doing nothing while our courageous and compassionate Customs and Border Protection personnel were overwhelmed by that crisis, now some Democrats want to lecture us about their moral concern. There's nothing compassionate about refusing to change the laws that human traffickers use to take advantage of poor families. Those who would advocate open borders, free health care for illegal immigrants and making illegal immigration legal are making it easier for human traffickers to mistreat poor and vulnerable families. That is morally wrong. And that has got to stop.
Pence added that the United States is on track to have approximately 1,000,000 illegal immigrants come across the southern border this year "to take advantage of loopholes in our laws." He added commentary about the shifting demographics of those who illegally enter the U.S. and the dangers they undertake to do so, stating,
And so the first time in history, the majority of them are families that are being enticed by human traffickers who charge them $5,000 a person by most estimates. They're enticed to pay cash to be taken on the long and dangerous journey north to our border. Seventy percent of illegal immigrants once they present at the border report being victims of violence along the way. According to Doctors Without Borders, nearly one-third of young women traveling to our southern border from Central America are sexually assaulted on the journey.
After supporting the President's work in passing the overwhelmingly bipartisan bill that will speed $4.6 billion in humanitarian aid to support the compassionate work of HHS and CBP, V.P. Pence stressed that there is still "more work to do." V.P. Pence reminded attendants that just under a decade ago, President Obama said that Obamacare would not apply to those in the country illegally, then added, "this week, every major Democrat candidate for president promised to offer free taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants. And many others promised to decriminalize illegal immigration altogether." These are undoubtedly significant incentives for more illegal aliens to make the unnecessarily dangerous journey to cross the southern border into the United States.
V.P. Pence ended in the inspiration note, "Whatever Democrats want to do to continue to deny and obstruct our efforts to secure our border, end this crisis and reform our laws, we're gonna keep telling the story," Pence vowed. "We're going to keep finding allies in Congress and across this country. And we're going to fix this broken immigration system."
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