Ted Cruz Rips Biden Over Border, Says U.S. on Pace for 2 Million Illegal Crossings in 2021

Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz mocked Vice President Kamala Harris' role as unofficial "border czar" Friday, claiming that President Joe Biden is directly responsible for the "flood of humanity" coming into the United States.

Speaking with The Chad Hasty Show radio program, Cruz once again took lead as the GOP's chief critic of the Biden administration's handling of the migrant family crisis at the U.S. southern border. He warned listeners that the U.S. is on pace to surpass two million illegal crossings in 2021 and repeatedly touted that he and 19 other GOP senators went to the border last month.

"We went out with the Border Patrol on their midnight patrol, we saw caravans of people just hiking north from the Rio Grande. We saw children, little children, walking all alone. We saw moms nursing with infant children, just walking north, just a stream of humanity," Cruz said on the program Friday, highlighting a "midnight patrol" he and the other GOP lawmakers participated in along Texas' southern border.

Cruz described at length what two million illegal crossings looks like in real-time, highlighting his visit to the Donna, Texas, tent city "that was built to handle this surge" of undocumented migrants. He said his top concern is COVID-19, which is spreading with an infection rate of 10 percent among the children "packed in cages" at the vastly overcrowded border facility. Border Patrol officials have said the facility is intended to house 250 people due to pandemic restrictions, but has amassed more than 4,200 in recent weeks.

"Biden built the cages and Joe Biden is building bigger cages and more cages and they're more full, the Biden cages...the tents weren't even three inches apart, packed in as close as you can be," Cruz said. "What's frustrating is that all of this was preventable. All of this is the result of a political decision Joe Biden made."

Many critics from both sides of the aisle have questioned what Harris' so-called "border czar" role has been. The White House has scrambled to explain her role, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterating to reporters last week that Harris is not focused on the southern border itself, but rather how to curb the root causes of the migration.

Cruz ridiculed her participation, noting: "I don't know if she quit or she was fired but she didn't do anything. Neither one of them [Biden and Harris] has been to the border since they were elected."

On Saturday, the senator also tweeted Saturday: "Today's Democrat Party is a collection of extreme interest groups. Biden made a decision to essentially give these radicals what they want on immigration: open borders. And because Biden's policies, we are on pace for 2 million illegal crossings this year. #BidenBorderCrisis."

Newsweek reached out to Cruz's office and the White House for additional remarks Sunday morning.