Rep. Crenshaw Visits Border, Calls Situation ‘Unstable’

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) speaks during an event in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 26, 2020. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) over the weekend visited the southern border of the United States, describing the situation there as “unstable.”

Crenshaw was briefed by Texas Department of Public Safety officials and toured the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facility in Edinburg. At one point, he shared footage of himself boarding a helicopter and viewing the border from the air.

“Here’s going to be the big takeaway from today and everything we’ve put out about what’s going on on the border: The situation is completely unstable. That’s the takeaway,” he said in a video he posted on social media.

Crenshaw said the areas he toured have been seeing a huge spike in migrants, with over 6,000 apprehended at just one station.

“That’s just one station along the border in Texas, the Rio Grande City station. And they expect that to possibly double within the next month—that’s just the trend that they’re seeing,” he said.

Republicans have been critical of President Joe Biden’s immigration and border-related executive orders, including halting construction of the border wall and repealing former President Donald Trump’s declaration of an emergency at the border.

Texas on Saturday launched an operation to counter the growing crisis, activating National Guard troops and deploying them and other law enforcement officers to the border to combat drug and human smuggling.

The surge of migrants in recent weeks triggered the sending of a team by the White House to examine in person “the influx of unaccompanied minors and an assessment of additional steps that can be taken to ensure the safety and care of these children,” a spokesperson for the Biden administration said last week.

According to Crenshaw, Texas has had to pay hundreds of millions more in recent weeks due to the Biden administration’s handling of border security.

“Texas has to fund Operation Drawbridge. They’ve got to fund an operation to secure Texas, which means, in practical terms, they’ve got to fund camera systems; they’ve got to fund the personnel and the officers to go try to catch drug traffickers that are getting through because CBP is dealing with 100 migrant families at a time. Why? Because the Biden administration basically decided that they don’t really want to enforce the law anymore, and that creates a backend for more and more people to come across. Why? Because they get a bus ticket, and they get to go wherever they want even if they have a positive drug test,” he added.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he pledged.