West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said the nation's "greatest crisis" was insecurity at the southern border.
Manchin delivered his assessment during a Sunday appearance on CBS' Face The Nation with host Margaret Brennan.
During his appearance, the West Virginia senator insisted "the border has to be fixed."
"We were told before Christmas, we’re going to stay here and get this done," Manchin said of congressional hopes of securing a border deal late last year. "Then, all of a sudden, OK, you can go home now, because we’re getting some language done now, but we’re writing, putting pen to it. We’re going to come back, and, as soon as we come back – that was last week – we’ll have something.”
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“Now, this is the second week,” he continued. “This is the greatest crisis we’re facing right now is the border, and it’s dangerous."
"If Congress cannot do its job, because the perfect is the enemy of the good, it’s just not perfect enough for the Democrats or Republicans, or it’s gone too far or not far enough, the president has to step forward and declare an emergency," Manchin suggested. "I don’t believe there should be any more paroles at the border until we can get a handle on what’s going on. And it is – it’s just extremely bad right now.”
Manchin reiterated President Joe Biden should declare a national emergency over the southern border to "do what needs to be done to shut that border down and secure it until we can get a handle."
Fellow Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania similarly expressed concern over illegal border crossings in a December statement urging Democrats in Congress to work with their Republican counterparts.
“I hope Democrats can understand that it isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border,” Fetterman told POLITICO. “It’s a reasonable conversation, and Democrats should engage.”
Fetterman further cited nearly 270,000 border encounters, per a September report from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “Honestly, it’s astonishing. And this isn’t a Fox News kind of statistic. This is the government’s,” he said of the statistics. “You essentially have Pittsburgh showing up there at the border.”
On Friday, fellow Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota threw criticism towards Biden over his handling of the southern border during NewsNation's Democratic Presidential Forum.
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“I’ve been there twice. It is an unmitigated, embarrassing, unforgivable disaster," Phillips said, warning Republicans could take the White House in November over lack of Democratic action on border security.
