It is not enough for the anti-Trump Resistance to oppose the Trump administration’s policies. A true resister must also oppose statements of fact, so long as they are uttered by the president.

This adherence to total opposition, even to the point of the absurd, is the only explanation for why Democrats and their allies in the press refuse to concede that there is indeed a crisis at the U.S. southern border.

Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, D-N.M., for example, declined to say Tuesday whether there is an ongoing humanitarian crisis at the border stemming from mass immigration and efforts by U.S. officials to control it. Rather, the congresswoman would say only that lawmakers and immigration officials face some “real challenges,” as if she were discussing an obstacle course.

“So as you mentioned, I grew up along the border, and I’m actually the only member of the Homeland Security Committee that represents a district along the U.S.-Mexico border,” the congresswoman said during an appearance on MSNBC. “So I see real challenges we are facing, and those challenges are getting bigger as we see more and more families voluntarily presenting along the border.”

She said the administration’s “lack of initiative” has only exacerbated these so-called challenges.

“For example, we have a bipartisan agreement to increase judges. That was part of the resolution over the shutdown,” she said. “Instead, those immigration judges haven’t been hired. So there are ways we can make our asylum process more efficient that are just being ignored right now.”

MSNBC co-host Willie Geist pressed her for clarification, saying, “So you believe there is a crisis at the border now, it's just that there’s not enough being done about it.”

“I believe that there are real challenges along the border and that we have to work together to address them,” the congresswoman replied.

Sure, Democrats don't want to be seen conceding the point that there is a crisis at the border. But there is a crisis at the border.

As noted elsewhere in the Washington Examiner, more than 50,000 migrants were arrested each month in October, November, and December trying to enter the U.S. illegally, marking an increase from 2017’s monthly average, according to Customs and Border Protection officials.

The number of families illegally crossing the border into the U.S. in recent months has overwhelmed immigration officials with a new kind of “humanitarian crisis,” the New York Times reported in January. At the same time, immigration courts have also been overwhelmed with a backlog of roughly 760,000 cases, the Justice Department reported in January.

“You’ve got a humanitarian crisis, which has created a border security crisis for us, that we’ve been doing this for an awfully long time, and this is all being driven by policy crisis,” Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz of the U.S. Border Patrol said in an interview with CNN this week.

He added, “And until we fix the policy crisis, we’re going to continue to deal with the other two.”

Notice that Ortiz did not use the word “challenges.” He used the word “crisis.”