Biden touts fight against 'climate crisis' while refusing to call border ‘crisis’

close

Video

Sen. Cornyn: Biden admin 'has no plan' for handling border crisis

Texas Republican joins 'Your World' to discuss the president's approach to immigration reform amid surge of migrants

President Biden is touting his administration's efforts to "combat the climate crisis" even as he refuses to describe the border crisis as a "crisis." 

In a tweet posted Thursday, the president lauded the swearing-in of his new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan and boasted how his new environment czar will fight the "climate crisis."

"As the new EPA Administrator, [Regan] will play a crucial role in our whole-of-government initiative to combat the climate crisis," wrote Biden. "I look forward to working with him to ensure every American has clean air and water while also delivering environmental justice."

Biden has been quick to call climate change a "crisis," but he and his administration refuse to call the immigration situation at the southern border as such.

TEXAS REPUBLICANS RIP BIDEN AFTER BORDER PATROL CAPTURES CONVICTED SEX PREDATORS ILLEGALLY CROSSING BORDER

In fact, White House press secretary Jen Psaki quickly corrected herself at a Thursday press conference where she referred to the growing migrant surge at the border as a "crisis."

"Challenges at the border," Psaki walked herself back, before responding "nope" to a question on whether her word choice was a shift in Biden administration messaging.

The U.S. is facing what the Biden administration admits is an "overwhelming" number of migrants at the southern border while scrambling to construct new facilities to hold child migrants -- but it is doggedly refusing to describe the situation as a "crisis."

"It doesn't matter what you call it. It is an enormous challenge," Psaki said last week, before saying: "We don't feel the need to, you know, play games with what it's called."

On Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol issued a press release announcing they had apprehended multiple convicted sexual predators who illegally crossed the border into Texas over the past week.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, weighed in on the apprehensions, telling Fox News that the Biden administration refuses to "recognize" the crisis at the border and brought up his experience travelling to the southern border on Monday.

"Our border is a mess, yet the Biden administration refuses to recognize it. Yesterday, DHS Secretary Mayorkas told us that the border is ‘secure.’ It is not," said Pfluger. "I traveled to the border on Monday to survey the border patrol facilities. I saw firsthand the deficiencies in tools and resources our brave agents are dealing with to process and care for the thousands of people coming across our border illegally."

"If we really cared about children, we would be looking at the policies that are incentivizing the drug called cartels, the traffickers, the coyotes that are bringing them across and exploiting them in every way," continued Pfluger. "Even more, many are crossing wish our nation harm — including individuals that have been apprehended crossing the border and later identified on the terror watch list."

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.