MISSION, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) held a news conference Saturday at Anzalduas Park to address what lawmakers are calling a border crisis.
Legislators and law enforcement officials from across the country gathered to push for stronger border security. The group said what is happening in our backyard is affecting their communities, some of them thousands of miles away.
Jeanine Notter, State Representative from New Hampshire, said, “The border crisis is not a California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas crisis. It is a national security crisis.”
“Geographically, I’m located between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and every single day, I am feeling the effects, my citizens are feeling the effects of an unsecured and insecure border,” Sheriff Michael Lewis, from Wicomico County, Maryland, said.
The group says the Biden administration has failed to secure the border and is asking the White House to step up.
Participants want the administration to allow law enforcement to do its job.
Oklahoma State Representative Dell Krebs said he is worried about migrants not entering through legal ports of entry.
“For one that comes through the gate correctly, four or five others, or more, don’t,” Krebs said. “And we’re not doing anything about the don’ts.”
Aside from the number of migrants coming through the border, all attendees put special emphasis on the problem of fentanyl.
West Virginia Representative Mike Stuart said the opioids that pass through the border have affected every part of his state.
“My goodness, we aren’t making fentanyl in West Virginia,” Stuart said. “We aren’t making fentanyl anywhere in this country. It’s being made in Mexico and China, and it’s coming across the Rio Grande.”
Law enforcement officials say they’re stretched thin and do not have the manpower to respond to an increase in migrant-related emergency calls.
Sheriff Ray Del Bosque said his department is the only law enforcement agency in Zapata County.
He adds his department relies on Texas DPS as well as Border Patrol and Game Wardens to back them up.
