Indiana Senator Mike Braun visits US southern border addressing border crisis

EAGLE PASS, TX. - "No community is immune from the border crisis," said Sen. Braun, during his visit to the southern border on Monday, November 13.

This visit, Sen. Braun was joined by the Indiana Sheriff's Association, members of local law enforcement, Maverick County Sheriff, and border patrol.

"When I have 24 sheriffs from my state, [who] asked me to come along because they view it as a key issue, [...] because they're going to be dealing with the consequences of it," he said in an interview with ABC57. 

Much has changed since Braun's last visit in 2021, shortly after President Biden took office, and according to Braun, Biden immediately reversed the Trump administration's border policies that "were working." 

Over the past year, the border has received a historic number of migrants, with nearly 2.5 million people seeking asylum in the United States. 

Sen. Braun calls Biden's current border crisis agenda a "dire threat to our national security."

Last week, Braun called out Department of Homeland Security's Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or be impeached. 

According to a March 9 press release from the White House, "Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him."

The White House lists deploying over 23,000 agents to address the border situation, increasing border security and outlining consequences for those to try to enter without legal pathways, including working towards expediting legal pathways for orderly migration for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Out of the $25 billion budget for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $40 million is allocate towards combatting fentanyl trafficking, disrupting transnational criminal organizations and hiring an additional 460 CBP and ICE processing assistants. 

But, for Braun, he's seeing problems from the border crisis seeping into the Midwest. 

“The crisis on our southern border means every state is a border state," said Braun in a press release. "Fentanyl is killing Hoosiers every day, and we’ve had 600,000 ‘gotaways’ enter our country from nearly every nation on Earth. With 169 people on the terrorist watchlist stopped at our border in the last year." 

Sen. Braun's visit included touring immigrant camps, parts of the border wall, and inquiring whether Border Patrol is concerned with the threat of terrorists entering the border, which FBI Director Wray has warned about and DHS Secretary Mayorkas was unable to deny at a recent congressional hearing.