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KTSM News – Speaker Johnson to tour Eagle Pass amid surge at the border

Posted on January 3, 2024

EAGLE PASS, Texas (Nexstar) — As migrant encounters at the southern border continue to hit record levels, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is leading a Congressional delegation to Eagle Pass on Tuesday.

The trip comes after a record-breaking number of encounters at the southern border last month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered more than 300,000 migrants in December. The Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, registered more than 71,000 migrant encounters– the majority of them came from Venezuela.

Former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told NewsNation he wants the congressional delegates to meet with border patrol agents to get a solid understanding of the problems and solutions.

“[Johnson] needs to understand from them, what are the what are the tools that they need to do their job? And what are the policies in place that they have seen to be effective over their career,” Wolf said. “I think if he does that, and the other members of the delegation do that, they’ll come back to DC with a number of ideas and a number of things to to press the Biden administration to do more of.”

Johnson recently wrote a letter to President Joe Biden, urging executive action on the border crisis amid the December migrant surge. He’s proposing a reinstatement of former President Donald Trump’s hardline border policies such as “Remain in Mexico.”

His letter comes after Senate Republicans were unable to find an agreement on border policy changes before their holiday recess, which ultimately held up a larger package with emergency aid to Ukraine and Israel.

“We are now more vulnerable to a terrorist attack on our homeland than ever,” Johnson wrote in the letter, adding that ending those policies has undermined America’s sovereignty and security.

Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, said he is also frustrated with how the White House is handling the crisis. He doesn’t agree on all of his Republican colleagues in their border policy demands, but hopes they kind find common ground on issues like how to process asylum seekers.

“We need to detain people, give them their day in court quickly, and then deport the ones that don’t qualify,” he said. “Right now people are coming because they feel that all they have to do is reach the border.”

Cuellar said he has been working with Republicans in Congress, like Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales and Sen. John Cornyn. The Laredo Democrat is proposing increased requirements to qualify for asylum/.

“We raise the criteria and after we give them their hearing, we got to make sure that we deport people. Because the bottom line is if you don’t deport people, then people are going to keep coming,” Cuellar said.

The speaker will be joined by more than 50 House Republicans at the border, where they will be briefed by Texas leaders and hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m.

NewsNation contributed to this story.

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