We have a humanitarian, public health and security emergency at the border.
Last month, I took 18 U.S. senators down to the Rio Grande Valley so we could see for ourselves what is happening on the southern border. I’ve been to the border many, many times, but when I went last month it was the worst I’ve ever seen it. The first night we were there we went on midnight patrol with the National Border Patrol Council. On the banks of the Rio Grande, we saw migrant after migrant after migrant crossing the river in a nearly endless stream of illegal border crossings. We saw the bright lights of coyotes who were illegally bringing people across the river in rickety and dangerous rafts to the spot where we stood. The coyotes heckled and taunted the agents who were with us, laughing and yelling that there was nothing the agents could do to stop the human smuggling. And they were right—as we learned the next morning, there had been 2,900 apprehensions in that sector over the previous 24 hours, quadruple the per-day numbers of only a few weeks prior. After crossing into the United States, these illegal immigrants were housed in pens underneath the Anzalduas International Bridge so they could be „processed.“ This makeshift processing center underneath a bridge is basically an expedited catch-and-release center. Because of the overwhelming stream of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande, people are kept under the bridge for about eight hours so that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can make room for more illegal immigrants. Once the initial processing under the Anzalduas bridge takes place, illegal immigrants are taken for further processing at the McAllen or Donna Processing facility, the latter of which is a gigantic tent city.
