Texas Senator Ted Cruz has identified Nantucket and 12 other communities as locations where he wants to establish new ports of entry to send undocumented immigrants who have been detained at the Texas border.
Cruz introduced the legislation, which he calls the “Stop the SURGE Act”, yesterday as a way to “alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities.”
In addition to Nantucket, the bill identifies Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, Greenwich, Conn., Cambridge, Mass., and Palo Alto, CA, among others, as the communities where new ports of entry should be established under the bill.
The Texas Republican went on Fox News yesterday and said part of his motivation in proposing the legislation is “so rich Democrats can be sitting there and suddenly see 10, 20, 30, 50,000 illegal immigrants, like we’re seeing in Texas on a daily basis. And I can just envision them in Nantucket sipping a martini saying “Oh goodness, they want to come to our clubs!” they would be horrified but they need to face the disaster of their policies and the humanitarian misery they’re causing.”
While the bill has virtually no chance of proceeding in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Cruz said the legislation was a way to hold his political opponents, including President Biden and Bernie Sanders, accountable for what he claims is a “man-made border crisis” unfolding in Texas.
Cruz’ office in Washington did not return multiple requests for comment on Tuesday.
Democratic Congressman Bill Keating, who represents the island in the House of Representatives, called Cruz’s proposed legislation “a lame political stunt.”
“It seems like whenever Ted Cruz is facing a crisis in Texas his mind wanders to vacation destinations whether it be Nantucket or Cancun,” Keating said. “As the nation faced defaulting on our debt last week and critical pieces of legislation are stalled in the Senate, this is the lame political stunt Ted Cruz was working on.”
Nantucket town manager Libby Gibson said she was unaware of the legislation filed by Cruz, and she had not heard about it from any of the island’s elected representatives in Congress.
