Alabama’s GOP delegation to Washington continues to keep a focus on the southern border as illegal crossings spike and the White House promotes spending priorities that ‘manage the border’ as opposed to ‘securing the border.’
Since President Biden took office, there have been more than 7 million illegal crossings at the southern border, including more than 1.5 million known “gotaways.”
RELATED: GOP delegation says border ‘not under control’
Last week, Sen. Katie Britt joined GOP colleagues at a press conference to depict that reality from their perspective on the Homeland Security Subcommittee for the all-powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
“What’s happening is we’ve created an environment where human traffickers, drug cartels, and terrorists rule the day,” Britt (R-Montgomery) told reporters.
“We’ve got to do more. You heard Senator Capito talk about 6 million people being in our interior right now under ICE. We only have 6,000 ICE agents. That’s where we need to be investing our money, not in NGOs, where we create a shinier object for the drug cartels to use to lure people here,” Britt said.
Britt and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) are signed onto the priority solution proposed by lawmakers who say inaction by the Biden Administration is dangerous: the Secure the Border Act.
RELATED: Tuberville, Britt help introduce Secure the Border Act
Britt also shed light on the devastating impact of drugs, particularly fentanyl, across communities nationwide.
“You look at the drug cartels and what they’ve done with fentanyl in every community around this great nation. Last year alone in Alabama, we had to use Narcan 15 times the first two months of our school year because of overdoses on campus,” Britt said.
“There is a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, a cousin who is sitting around a dining room table tonight who is missing somebody because President Biden will not do his job.”
According to NBC News, U.S. border agents have encountered a “growing number of individuals” on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist trying to enter the country illegally through the southern border.
Britt says that’s a national security nightmare.
“The numbers here don’t lie, guys. Look at the last administration,” she said. “The last administration, in that total time span of those four years, do you know how many people we found on the wanted terrorist watch list at the border? Eight. Do you know how many people on the terrorist watch list that we have caught at the border in the [current] fiscal year alone? And we’re not finished yet. 244.
RELATED: Britt draws ‘red line’ on Biden’s border proposal: ‘He knows walls work’
“We must do something, and I commend my colleagues for standing here, once again, and we just hope our other colleagues on the other side of the aisle will wake up, join forces, and do something for the American people. Our children are counting on it.”
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