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SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Spencer Cox is pointing fingers when it comes to the country's immigration crisis.
Cox said the "imbeciles in Congress can't get their crap together" when it comes to solving immigration issues during his monthly news conference on Thursday.
"Congress has abdicated their responsibility around immigration for the last 40 years. They've punted. It's hard to blame any single administration when really this problem lies at the feet of Congress," Cox said. "All they want to do is get reelected by pointing fingers at each other and they divide us. They do it on purpose and it's embarrassing. They should all get fired."
Cox's comments were in response to a question from a reporter about whether he supports Florida's strict, controversial immigration restrictions and if such laws are something he sees happening in Utah. The Florida law is seen as the strictest in the nation and, among other things, requires medium to large companies and hospitals to verify employees' and patients' immigration status and prohibits undocumented people from driving in the state even if they have a license from another state. The law has already resulted in some loss of workers and a boycott by Latino truckers who are refusing to enter the state.
Cox did not directly answer questions about the Florida law, saying he wasn't familiar with the changes. Instead, Cox launched into a rant about immigration. The governor repeated his tried-and-true stance on the matter: Border security and fixing legal immigration are not mutually exclusive.
"We absolutely have to do more to secure the border. First and foremost, that is critical," he said, adding that fixing legal immigration will help issues at the border. "When you have a broken immigration system, it ends up pushing people to go through the back door instead of the front door and to go through the wrong ways instead of the right ways. So I don't think those things are mutually exclusive."
Cox's comments came just days after the governor joined two dozen other Republican governors in issuing a statement in support of Texas's unprecedented border policies. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called on governors to send all available law enforcement to the border.
"States should not be trying to fix this. The Constitution is very clear that immigration is a federal issue, but states have to step in because these imbeciles in Congress can't get their crap together to do something that everybody knows needs to be done. And that is to protect the border and to fix legal immigration," Cox said.
