In his latest political stunt to draw attention to an influx of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border into his state, Texas governor Greg Abbott sent two busloads of Venezuelan migrants to Washington, D.C.’s Naval Observatory Thursday morning, just outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ home.
In what appears to be an organized plan between “Fox & Friends” and the buses’ arrival around 6:45 a.m. local time, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins was on the scene to interview the non-English-speaking migrants as they exited the bus.
“This bus just arrived moments ago,” Jenkins said, streaming in to anchor Steve Doocy. “I talked to some of the folks, apparently this bus has come from Del Rio, Texas – that’s what a gentleman on the bus told me.”
He then interrupted a woman with a “pardon me” and asked segmented questions like “habla Inglés?” and “de donde arris?” before painstakingly getting her to indicate that she believes the border is “open.”
“So what she’s saying Steve, I asked her: ‘Vice President Harris says the border is closed.’ She says it’s open, as we see these migrants coming across now,” he said. “We’re not sure how many there are.”
A second interviewee gave Jenkins a longer answer in Spanish than he bargained for while trying to learn more about his country of origin. Nodding confusingly, the reporter replied, “OK, thank you, bueno verte,” before turning back to camera.
“So I’m not going to be able to translate all that, and I’m not even going to try because it wouldn’t look good on live TV, but as you can see they’re coming across here, all these migrants. It appears to be at least 20 or so at this point. We have two buses.
“We know from Gov. Abbott’s office that there have been 7,900 migrants on over 190 buses coming to D.C., more than 2,200 on more than 40 buses to New York, and, of course, about five buses to Chicago with a little over 300 migrants,” he added.
Later in the segment, Jenkins even tried interviewing a young boy in pajamas.
“As you can see, children coming across here,” he told Doocy. “The majority of migrants that have been coming, and I can give you some of the most recent numbers, but in the last month, about 70% are single adults. But as you can see, these are not all single adults. A lot of families getting off this bus right now.”
“We don’t know where they’re going to go, they don’t know where they’re going to go because there’s no one from the D.C. office from immigration meeting them,” he concluded. “There are a few other reporters out here, that’s all who are here.”
Watch a clip from the cringey Fox News segment in the video above.
