KC Reporter

On May 11, 2023, we've spent over five billion dollars building more than 2,700 miles of wall—and no, not at our southern border. All along our nation's highways, we've built noise abatement walls—20 to 30 feet tall in some cases. Protecting neighborhoods from highway noise might be worthwhile, but it isn't a crisis. What's happening at our southern border is a crisis.

There have been more than 5 million illegal border crossings since President Biden took office and more than 1.3 million illegal immigrants have evaded apprehension at the border. That's bad enough, but now, with Title 42 set to end at midnight, illegal border crossings are skyrocketing.

In the last 72 hours, there have been 26,382 apprehensions at the border. That's more than one apprehension every 10 seconds. And those are just the crossings we know about—that doesn't even begin to account for the number of illegal immigrants pouring into this country undetected while our Border Patrol agents are so overwhelmed.

Human traffickers and drug smugglers have also been exploiting the crisis. Over 14,000 pounds of fentanyl was seized at southern border last year—enough to kill almost half the world's population. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's still more fentanyl flooding across our border and into our communities.

How do we know that? Because we've all seen the devastating impacts of fentanyl use in our communities. More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year and many of them overdosed on fentanyl and other synthetic opioids trafficked across our southern border. These aren't just numbers; it's friends taken from us too soon, children losing parents, and parents mourning the loss of children. No parent should have to bury their child because we don't have the courage to secure our southern border.

Make no mistake, this crisis isn't by mistake—it's by design. On his first day in office, President Biden fired off a laundry list of executive orders rolling back security at our border and halting construction of the border wall. Instead of listening to the pain of American families and communities, he's doubled down and continued to push for more open border policies.

Republicans in Congress aren't going to sit by and let this happen. We passed the Secure the Border Act, which resumes construction of the border wall, deploys new technology to the border, increases the number of Border Patrol agents, strengthens laws protecting unaccompanied minors from human traffickers, ends the catch and release of illegal immigrants, and ends the abuse of immigration authorities by the President. This is a commonsense solution every American should be able to get behind.

If we can afford to spend billions building thousands of miles of noise abatement walls along our highways, we can finish the wall and secure our border to protect our children and our communities. We can't afford not to.

Sincerely,

Sam Graves

Original source can be found here.