AUSTIN, Texas — Nearly a third of all House Republicans are expected to visit the epicenter of the border crisis Wednesday as the immigration surge reached new records in recent weeks.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) will lead more than 60 Republicans on a trip to Eagle Pass, a remote border town located 140 miles southwest of San Antonio where thousands of immigrants have crossed daily over the past several years.
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“It’s critical for Members of Congress from all over the country to see what it’s like for border communities on the frontlines. Out of the 20 CODEL’s [congressional delegations] I’ve hosted at the border, this one will be the largest, with over 60 Republican members coming to Eagle Pass,” Gonzales wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner Tuesday evening.
“Nothing shows a commitment to solving this problem like visiting for yourself and solving our border crisis needs to be priority number one this Congress,” Gonzales said just hours ahead of the lawmakers’ arrival.
The two-day trip will commence Tuesday evening in San Antonio, where many immigrants who are released by the Border Patrol or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and allowed to remain in the country will travel because it is the closest major city to the border. Lawmakers will hear from Border Patrol’s second in command about the state of operations in the Eagle Pass and Del Rio area and nationwide, Gonzales said in an interview on CNN on Monday.
On Wednesday, the delegation will drive to Eagle Pass to meet with sheriffs, judges, ranchers, commissioners, mayors, and Texas Department of Public Safety officers about how the crisis has affected border communities and counties 100 miles north of the border. Republicans will also tour several Border Patrol facilities in the region where immigrants are temporarily detained while they are booked into custody.
“The goal is for House Republicans to be focused on solutions towards the border as we get in the ’24 year and we start to get to tackle some of these legislative priorities,” Gonzales said.
The trip comes three years into President Joe Biden’s term, all while the border crisis has gone from bad to worse and the Biden administration’s attempted fixes have proved inconsequential.
For Republicans, the border visit is a chance to educate members on how Biden’s policies are impacting operations there, and it serves as the starting point for the party’s second year in control of the House after it passed comprehensive border security legislation last year but it died in the Senate.
Big names in the GOP, including House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), will attend, according to Gonzales’s office.
However, border hawk Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), whose district sits between San Antonio and Austin, announced Tuesday that he will sit out the trip.
“Our people – law enforcement, ranchers, local leaders – are tired of meetings, speeches, and press conferences,” Roy wrote in a letter to letter to his colleagues Tuesday, in which he told them to use their legislative authority not to fund the government rather than making another trip south.
Instead, Roy calls on House to use “power of the purse” >>
Says he will “refuse to fund – or otherwise empower – the [U.S.] Government, or any foreign
government it is supporting, unless and until it fulfills its constitutional obligation to defend our borders
from invasion.” https://t.co/wIMJo5OrtJ— Cami Mondeaux (@cami_mondeaux) January 2, 2024
Once back in Washington next week, House Republicans are intent on taking up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas while the Senate mulls what kind of border security funding to include in a supplemental bill to send more than $100 billion to Ukraine and Israel. Supplemental talks have been ongoing over the holiday recess but have yet to produce a border deal.
Green and House Homeland Security Committee Republicans highlighted U.S. Customs and Border Protection data from November and said the declining situation at the border was more reason to remove Mayorkas from office.
“Last month’s CBP data encapsulates part of why this Committee will be taking up articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, as this crisis is only further spinning out of control through his intentionally reckless catch-and-release policies and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress,” the committee wrote in an email.
The Department of Homeland Security defended Mayorkas in an email to the Washington Examiner and said he plans to be in Eagle Pass next week for a private meeting with local officials and CBP leaders. The department did not respond to a question regarding whether Republicans invited Mayorkas this week.
“The House majority is wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday. “There is no valid basis to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, as senior members of the House majority have attested, and this extreme impeachment push is a harmful distraction from our critical national security priorities.”
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CBP encountered more than 308,000 illegal immigrants nationwide in November, the highest figure ever seen in a November. Numbers will be even higher in December.
Estimates shared with Fox News on Monday revealed that just across the southern border, authorities processed more than 302,000 immigrants in December, which does not include tens of thousands of immigrants encountered at the Canadian border or paroled into the United States at airports.
