Texas House Republicans Put Joe Biden on Notice, Release Plan to Secure the Border

Texas House Republicans today put Joe Biden on notice as they released a plan to secure the border. The border framework was written “by Texans for Texans” and is the latest plan released by the GOP to secure the border ahead of them taking control of the House in January.

The document is titled “A Commitment to Secure the Border” and outlines the strategies that Texas House Republicans want to implement at the border.

As Fox News reported, the commitments are split up into categories and based on legislation that has been introduced previously by Texas lawmakers. 

The first category is a commitment to completing infrastructure at the border, which includes finishing the Trump-era border wall. Completion of the border wall has largely stalled under the Biden administration.

Additionally, the lawmakers also want to aid Border Patrol recruitment and install 700 miles of roads along the border, while reimbursing Texas for border security expenses.

In the policy category, the Republicans want to require the U.S. government to turn away all illegal immigrants if they cannot be detained and placed into systems like the “Remain-in-Mexico” policy which kept migrants in Mexico for their hearings. 

The lawmakers called for the defunding of all non-governmental organizations that they say encourage “the violation of our border security and related laws” and the framework includes the closing of “loopholes” in asylum law in relation to the treatment of minors in an attempt to stop the abuse of the asylum system by those not fleeing persecution. 

The framework calls for increased enforcement for criminal illegal immigrants and visa overstayers by putting limits on the extent to which DHS can use prosecutorial discretion to release illegal immigrants into the interior, and its use of parole, which is supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis, to mass release migrants into the interior.

The plan concludes with a proposal to designate cartels as terrorists and increase penalties for human trafficking and drug smuggling, including fentanyl.

U.S. House Rep Mayra Flores (R-TX) only has less than a month left in office, but she is determined to do what she can in that time and spoke at a press conference that was held today.