Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is calling on his fellow Republicans to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until President Joe Biden’s administration meets a range of border security demands.
On Tuesday, Mr. Roy began circulating a letter (pdf) to fellow lawmakers, raising concerns about how illegal border crossings and cross-border trafficking are impacting his home state and calling for Republicans to force the Biden administration to adopt new border security policies.
“Criminal cartels maintain operational control of the border. Migrants are dying on Texas ranches and along the Rio Grande. Little children are enslaved in the sex-trafficking trade,” Mr. Roy wrote. ” . . .Fences are being cut, livestock are escaping, ranchers are threatened, and high-speed chases are tearing through small towns. Perhaps most deadly, dangerous fentanyl is pouring into our communities via an open border – empowering China and cartels while killing 200 Americans per day.”
Mr. Roy credited his fellow House Republicans with passing H.R. 2, the “Secure the Border Act,” which restarts border wall construction, places limits on the U.S. asylum system and expedites the removal process for illegal immigrants. While calling H.R. 2 “the strongest border security bill to ever pass Congress,” he said. “This amounts to nothing more than political theater if we are unwilling to use the strongest tool granted to us by the founders—the power of the purse—to force the change necessary to protect Texas and secure the border.”
Rather than passing a full-year appropriations bill for the DHS, the Texas Republican said the Republican-controlled House should hold up such funding “until the necessary steps are taken to secure the border. Among his proposed list of border security measures, Mr. Roy said lawmakers could hold out for H.R. 2 or a similarly strong border security bill to become law. The Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has yet to take up H.R. 2 since it passed along party lines in the Republican-controlled House in May.
Other terms Mr. Roy proposed in exchange for funding the DHS included adopting policies that give law enforcement agencies or the military more tools for targeting drug cartels or removing DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from office.
By Ryan Morgan
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