Several Republican congressmen who recently toured the US-Mexico border have said the situation is getting out of hand in the region. Among them were US Representatives Jim Banks (R-IN), Tony Gonzales (R-TX), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Victoria Spartz (R-IN), and Lloyd Smucker (R-PA).
After visiting a recently built detention and processing facility in Eagle Pass, Texas on Friday morning, the delegation then spoke to Border Patrol personnel to see firsthand the unresolved problems officers are facing.
“When you have folks that are career law enforcement with over 35 years of experience that are seeing spikes they have never seen before, and you hear that over and over, things are spiralling out of control at a record pace, that’s the biggest takeaway,” Congressman Tony Gonzales (R-TX) remarked after the visit.
He stressed the need for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit the region themselves and speak to the authorities, who are struggling with a surge of illegal crossings.
He then promised to “work towards policy solutions among our colleagues in the House" to improve the situation.
There has been a spate of violent human smuggling incidents at the border in recent months: in one of the most notorious incidents, two smugglers dropped children from the roughly 14-foot-high border barrier in the middle of the night – the kids were then found by border patrol officials.
The rise in illegal crossings registered soon after Joe Biden’s swearing-in has drawn the attention of media and the GOP alike, with Republicans having already gone on several trips to the US-Mexican border to assess the situation there.
However, both the Democrat president and his right-hand woman Harris, who was put in charge of migration issues, have so far stopped short of making a trip south themselves, refusing to acknowledge the situation on the border is a “crisis."
