By Staff Reporter |
With the election drawing near, Democratic congressional candidate Kirsten Engel is admitting more often that the situation at the border constitutes a crisis.
Engel initially denied the existence of any crisis at the border for several years after leaving the State Senate to launch her first congressional run in 2021. In a NOTUS article published on Monday, reporters took away from their interview with Engel that she maintained that same perspective until her campaign asked for a correction.
“She has refrained from calling the situation on the border a ‘crisis,’” read the initial reporting. “Engel told NOTUS she didn’t feel her own campaign was shifting much from her last run.”
The correction simply deleted that first statement and quoted to readers the opening line of an opinion piece she wrote for the Arizona Republic in February. However, the Engel campaign also maintained that she wasn’t shifting policy positions much from her first run.
“Arizona Democrat Kirsten Engel has referred to the situation at the border as a ‘crisis’ during her 2024 campaign,” read the correction. “This run, she’s emphasized how important issues at the border are repeatedly, penning an op-ed that said ‘for far too long, southern Arizona has shouldered the brunt of our nation’s border crisis.’”
As part of her last run, Engel signaled support for bringing an end to Title 42, which expelled illegal immigrants back to the country from which they entered the United States. These expulsions lasted from March 2020 and ended in May 2023 according to the Customs and Border Protection.
Engel said in 2022 that the massive uptick of illegal immigrants didn’t constitute a crisis.
Engel’s platform this go around mentions increasing manpower, technology, and security measures at the border. This part of her platform doesn’t mention building the last of the wall along the border, a security measure she criticized as outdated during her last campaign.
The bulk of that opinion piece criticized her opponent, incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani, for refusing to back the $118 billion foreign aid bill which, in part, provided funding for the border ($20 billion). The main purpose of the bill was to provide additional funding for Ukraine — $60 billion — with the remainder allocated to other humanitarian aid and conflicts overseas.
Leading authorities on the border, such as the National Border Patrol Council, gave reluctant support for the foreign aid bill. That authority’s president, Brandon Judd, said that the Biden administration’s border policy had forced them to accept anything in the way of promising border security.
The $118 billion foreign aid bill was styled as a bipartisan bill because of its formation by independent Senator Kirsten Sinema, along with Republican Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Ciscomani has made use of Engel’s repeated past denials of the border crisis in campaign material. The border is a top issue of concern for voters. A poll released last week by Noble Predictive Insights found that over half of voters (63 percent) supported increased border security measures, namely Proposition 314 — the “Immigration and Border Law Enforcement Measure” that would allow state and local law enforcement to arrest those who violate migration laws as well as allow state judges to issue deportation orders.
Unlike Engel, Ciscomani’s policy platform does advocate for building the remainder of the border wall. Ciscomani also supports ending the catch and release practice of illegal immigrants, ending the exploitation of parole authority, reinstating former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, and expanding expedited removal authority.
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