If illegal immigrants know they can get away with it and stay here permanently then they will not stop coming. We needs to remove the incentives to come across by sending them back immediately. GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell explains.

Herrell: A broken southern border is now a lasting hallmark of the Biden presidency. Drugs and people flow across unabated, while President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have shown little interest in solving the crisis. Indeed, they are instead moving forward with a plan to hand out ID cards to illegal immigrants, making it easier to receive government services and benefits. It is up to Congress to protect our country.

According to Reuters, since President Biden took office, there have been more than 1,000 deaths along the U.S. Mexico border. On June 27, 53 migrants, men, women, and children, died in agony due heat exposure stuffed into an un-airconditioned semi-truck trailer by human smugglers near San Antonio, Texas. They were attempting to evade apprehension by U.S. Border Patrol.

Opioid and fentanyl deaths have also skyrocketed under Biden, with 108,000 Americans killed by overdoses in 2021. To put that amount in perspective, it is the equivalent of the entire population of Las Cruces or Rio Rancho, New Mexico, dying from poison in one year. If a foreign military destroyed a city this size, it is difficult to believe that the president and Congress would be so inactive. These drugs flow largely through our southern border, manufactured with precursors made in China and finished and trafficked by Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death of Americans 18 to 45, stealing America’s future before our eyes.

According to the Border Patrol, cartels are also getting rich over the staggering number of migrants illegally entering our country. Over 3.1 million have been apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection since Biden became president and more than 800,000 have evaded capture since the start of Fiscal Year 2021. Cartels use large migrant groups as a diversionary tactic to smuggle drugs in areas undefended by U.S. Border Patrol that are stuck processing thousands of migrants. The Biden administration has ceded control of our international sovereignty to these bloody killers, while few media talking heads seem to have noticed.

But the people of New Mexico notice. Millions of outraged Americans notice. It is our communities that suffer from the criminal networks trafficking people across our lands. It is our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who are killed by the tsunami of drugs that Biden and Mayorkas seem incapable of stopping.

But even if our president is uninterested in solving the border crisis, Congress can act. We can secure our border and stop this humanitarian disaster. Here are a few simple ways we can protect Americans, save lives, and strike back at the infiltration of cartels.

We should immediately pass my legislation, the PAUSE Act, to keep Title 42 protections in place for the remainder of the COVID-19 emergency declaration. This allows us to ensure the rapid repatriation of illegal migrants and eliminate incentives to cross illegally.