Top Democrats, including several presidential candidates, have declared in the past year there was no crisis at the border.
Amid a government shutdown engineered by President Donald Trump over a border security impasse, Speaker Nancy Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) accused him in January of "manufacturing a crisis" following Trump's Oval Office address on the matter.
"There is no crisis at the border," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) declared in February.
Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez referred to a "made-up crisis at the border," Rep. Debbie Mucarse-Powell (D., Fla.) called the situation a "crisis that does not exist at the border," and Rep. Jim Himes (D., Conn.) said it was a "fake crisis that doesn't exist."
2020 candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, former Obama official Julián Castro, and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke (D.) have also dismissed the idea of an emergency at the southern border.
"The president has said there is somehow this crisis at the border," Castro said in January. "That's a lie. That couldn't be further from the truth."
"There is no crisis in arrivals," O'Rourke said last year.
"We have a president of the United States who's created a fiction about a crisis at the border," Harris said in February.
"Trump shut down the government over a fake crisis at the border," de Blasio said in January.
"The security issue that he's raising, this emergency at the border, is fake," Warren said in February. "The whole point of that wall is to get his folks stirred up around the notion of hate."
Sanders and the DNC's official Twitter account have both tweeted this year there was no crisis at the border as well.
There. Is. No. Crisis. At. The. Border.
An important thread. ⬇️ https://t.co/27aZ7U7vPL
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 15, 2019
There's no crisis at the border. President Trump, you want to talk about crises?
-30 million Americans have no health insurance
-Climate change threatens our planet
-Half of older Americans have no retirement savings
-40 million are dealing with outrageous student debt— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 9, 2019
As the Washington Free Beacon reported last week, there has been a sea change in recent weeks among Democrats and media members about what constitutes a "crisis" in the surge of arrivals, asylum claims, and unauthorized crossings.
Immigration figured prominently in the first Democratic primary debates last week. Castro criticized O'Rourke for not supporting the decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings on the first debate night. Eight of the 10 candidates on the second night, including Sanders and Harris, supported Castro's position. Warren also agrees with Castro.
Congress passed a $4.6 billion aid package last week to address the issue. The number of people illegally crossing from Mexico into the United States hit a 12-year high in March.
Trump called the situation a "crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul" in his speech in January.
"Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States — a dramatic increase. These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs. One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico. Women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system," he said. "This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border. This is the cycle of human suffering that I am determined to end."