By Staff Reporter |
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari is continuing to dedicate her limited constituent-services capacity during the shutdown to illegal immigrants.
Ansari maintains these individuals qualify as constituents, though they aren’t voting members of the district.
The congresswoman says one of the detained immigrants she visited, Arbella “Yari” Rodriguez Marquez, counts as a constituent because she had a green card until recently. Marquez’s case has been picked up by the media due to her alleged ongoing cancer battle.
Green card holders cannot vote.
Immigration enforcement spokespersons announced over the summer, following heightened media attention, that Marquez doesn’t have cancer and that medical professionals had assisted her over a dozen times since her detainment in February.
“[W]hen she was arrested by @CBP for attempting to smuggle an illegal alien with fraudulent identification in her vehicle through the Nogales, Arizona port of entry, she told law enforcement she had no medical conditions and was not taking any medications,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
Marquez claims to have chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
In her last visit with Marquez, which lasted hours, Ansari revealed Marquez was allegedly visited by an oncologist on Oct. 8 but has not yet received the results or treatment plan from that visit. According to Ansari, the records from that visit will be delivered within the next two weeks.
Ansari did acknowledge the officials’ claim that Marquez doesn’t have cancer.
“Quite frankly, a lot of questioning, a lot of character assassination of Yari, the woman that was there with us insinuated there may be some doubt about her cancer from doctors and so they want her medical records from Mexico and from here,” said Ansari.
Officials also clarified that Marquez lost her green card and was detained for removal proceedings based on charges of human smuggling.
The congresswoman devoted the remainder of her time to pointing the finger at Republican leadership.
Ansari set up a table in front of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office. A handmade sign taped to the tablefront read: “Mike Johnson is starving families and gutting healthcare to cover up the Epstein files; change my mind.”
This claim of an Epstein files coverup is the Democrats’ latest talking point to pressure Republicans to agree to their terms for ending the government shutdown.
Ansari later claimed she was asked to vacate her makeshift post outside Johnson’s office.
The government shutdown has now lasted nearly 40 days. It broke the historical record for the longest shutdown officially on Wednesday. The December 2018 to January 2019 shutdown lasted 35 days. The third-longest shutdown occurred under President Bill Clinton from December 1995 to January 1996, 21 days.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated on Wednesday to reporters that they have nearly closed on a bipartisan “mini-package” deal for stopgap funding that would pay the select federal agencies necessary to end the shutdown.
Anonymized leaks to the press said a Friday vote would occur. Allegedly, Thune told fellow Republicans the Senate would take the necessary steps to end the shutdown on Friday, according to anonymous sources who spoke to Politico.
However, other source chatter indicated that Democrats felt more secure with prolonging a shutdown to negotiate stricter terms in their favor after the most recent election on Tuesday.
The shutdown’s impact to Arizona amounts to just under $300 million each week, or $1.3 billion per month. About 887,000 Arizonans rely on the SNAP benefits that dried up last week, 344,000 of whom are children. Around 58,000 federal workers in the state were furloughed or are working without pay.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
