Republican senators will visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday and Friday.
"This crisis is not getting better because the Biden Administration is simply not enforcing the law," Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said in a press release. "The sheer numbers of people coming across the border are keeping the Border Patrol from their primary job, which allows drug cartels to move illicit drugs that kill thousands of Americans every year."
Texas Republican Sens. Cornyn and Ted Cruz will lead their Republican colleagues Sens. James Lankford, Okla.; Joni Ernst, Iowa; John Barrasso, Wyo.; and Ron Johnson, Wis., on an expedition to survey the border in Texas's Rio Grande Valley.
From there, the senators will receive briefings from the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), Texas National Guard, local law enforcement, landowners, and others.
"Texans are the frontline of our border crisis," Cruz said. "Our communities suffer from the rampant influx of drugs and illegal immigration, and we suffer from the crime that accompanies it.
"We must do more as a country to secure our borders, but at the very least we cannot backslide by removing the current 'Remain in Mexico' policy that is helping our Border Patrol agents manage the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming to the border every month."
Cruz continued, "And it's not just a humanitarian and drug crisis — there are documented cases of convicted criminals and suspected terrorists trying to exploit our open border. For Americans to have real confidence in our government's ability to keep our nation safe, we need to see a secure southern border.
"As we visit the brave men and women of the Border Patrol next week, we hope to gain further insight into what steps we as elected legislators can take to secure our border and secure our communities."
According to CBP data, the number of southwest land border encounters for fiscal year 2022 as of May totaled 1,536,899. In 2021 the total encounters were 1,734,686.
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