Hurd's Border Strategy Reboot

I represented a district that covered the U.S.-Mexico border so I know first-hand the challenges we face at the border. Politicians love to talk about the border crisis, but their inaction on both sides of the aisle speaks louder than their sound bites. We need a border security policy that:

• Cracks down on cartels and human smugglers on our southern and northern borders
• Puts in place strong disincentives for migrants to come here illegally
• Eliminates long-term root causes of illegal immigration

I hunted terrorists in the Middle East. We should be hunting them at our borders using the full capabilities of the intelligence community to dismantle their networks in Mexico and the Northern Triangle.

We must treat the cartels the same way we treated the ISIS and al Qaeda: as terrorist organizations that pose a direct national security threat to Americans.

Fentanyl killed over 109,000 Americans last year alone while Mexican drug cartels raked in hundreds of millions of dollars flooding the U.S. with the deadly drug.

The smuggling of illegal drugs like opioids must face penalties equivalent to those imposed on terrorists who manufacture, possess, or use a weapon of mass destruction against our citizens.

We must improve our ability to secure and achieve operational control of the southern and northern borders.

As the first proponent on Capitol Hill to advocate for the use of automated sentry towers to monitor and track attempted border crossings, I understand first-hand the need to harness new technology to secure each mile of our border.

Further, we must audit the natural impediments that make visual detection more difficult, invest in current points of entry to shore up infrastructure, create new ports of entry to alleviate congestion and enhance security scans, and shore up partnerships with state and local law enforcement through greater investments in Operation Stonegarden.

The 5.5 million people who have come into our country illegally have abused the asylum process.

President Biden continued Donald Trump’s policy of treating everyone coming to the country illegally as an asylum seeker, which has caused the situation at the border to morph into the humanitarian crisis it now is.

Millions of asylum seekers are leaving places like the Northern Triangle – El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – and overwhelming our borders.

We must properly use existing foreign aid programs to these countries to help prevent the root cause of our border being overwhelmed: violence, lack of economic opportunity and extreme poverty. It’s a fraction of the cost to solve problems there before they show up here.