Kari Lake chastises Ruben Gallego’s concern over border: ‘Completely reversed himself’

Arizona Senate candidate, Republican Kari Lake, chastised Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) over his “politically convenient” decision to call out the Biden administration over the border crisis despite denying its legitimacy until recently.

“Ruben Gallego didn’t support extending Title 42, refused to fund Trump’s border wall, threatened ICE agents for carrying out deportations, and is on record saying the invasion happening along our southern border isn’t a national emergency. Now that it’s politically convenient for him, he’s completely reversed himself,” Lake said in a statement to the Washington Examiner Friday afternoon. “Expecting Gallego to handle our border crisis is like asking the arsonist to put out his fire.”

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A day earlier, Gallego made a strong statement aimed at President Joe Biden and urged the White House to declare a national emergency at the southern border. For several weeks, Arizona’s southeastern region has been inundated with immigrants entering illegally. In the week that ended Dec. 7, more than 17,500 immigrants were arrested in the Tucson area, one of the highest weeks ever seen by Border Patrol.

Gallego ordered Biden to reimburse state and local governments for money spent on emergency, safety, and public health services for immigrants as they were released into the state from the border.

“As I’ve said all along, the crisis at our southern border requires a federal response, especially after Title 42 was hastily lifted,” Gallego said in a statement Thursday. “An emergency declaration is needed to manage the humanitarian and security needs along Arizona’s border. Our state, especially border communities and local law enforcement, should not be left to respond to this surge alone.”

By Friday afternoon, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) announced that she had activated the state National Guard on orders to deploy to the Mexico border, an indication of how significant the situation in Tucson is.

A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee said Gallego’s change on the border was insincere.

“Ruben Gallego called the border wall ‘stupid,’ claimed there is no emergency at the southern border, and openly mocked Republicans for calling attention to the humanitarian crisis at the border,” NRSC spokesman Tate Mitchell wrote in a text message. “He’s an open-borders radical in every sense of the word, and no amount of election season flip-flopping will change that.”

In a 2017 op-ed, Gallego wrote that the border wall that Trump called for “will do nothing about the real issue of visa overstays” and that a barrier was a “giant waste of money.”

The following year, Gallego threatened punishment for federal government employees if it was later determined that they enforced Trump’s orders that led to U.S. Latinos being denied passports over alleged fake birth certificates.

In early 2019, as the number of illegal immigrants arrested at the border was rising, Gallego called out President Donald Trump for proposing a “national emergency” to go around Congress and move on border wall construction.

“There is no ‘national emergency’ coming from the border,” Gallego posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The only national emergency is to our Constitution coming from the White House.”

A spokesperson for Gallego’s campaign rebutted the attack following Lake’s statement.

“While Kari Lake does nothing but fear-monger on an issue she has never even attempted to solve, Ruben has delivered more than $93 billion in border security funding to keep Arizonans safe and hire thousands of border patrol agents — while also working to shore up a pathway to citizenship for those hoping to achieve the American Dream,” the spokesperson wrote in a text message.

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Gallego is running to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) next November. Sinema has not indicated whether she will seek reelection.