Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) called the crisis of unaccompanied minors flooding the border a "disaster of the president's own making."
Speaking on the Senate floor, Cruz denounced the president for his refusal to visit the border during his trip to Texas, despite his own administration designating it a humanitarian crisis: "President Obama today is down in the state of Texas but sadly he's not visiting the border. He's not visiting the children who are suffering as a result of the failures of the Obama policies. Instead, he's doing fund-raisers . He's visiting Democratic fat cats to collect checks and apparently there's no time to look at the disaster, at the devastation that's being caused by his policies."
Several Democrats have also begun to call for Obama to visit the border, particularly Rep. Henry Cuellar (D., Texas), who said Wednesday, "If he’s saying he’s too busy to go down to the border but you have time to drink a beer, play pool, the appearance means that he’s not paying attention to this humanitarian crisis."
Cruz rejected the administration's argument that the crisis is principally caused by violence in the children's home countries as a "complete red herring." Cruz argued that, while violence would cause immigration to rise, "There's no reason unaccompanied children would go up", saying it is a unique situation caused by the administration's policies that relaxed immigration laws for children.
"I would suggest," Cruz concluded, "the only response that will stop this humanitarian disaster is for President Obama to start enforcing the law, to stop promising amnesty, to stop refusing to enforce federal immigration law, and finally to secure the borders, and indeed I would call upon our colleagues in this body in both parties to come together and secure the border once and for all and to stop holding border security hostage for amnesty."