Two years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris was named the Biden Administration’s “border czar.”  One of her first acts was to travel to Guatemala where she had a message for migrants: “don’t come.”  That was it.  It was hardly a forceful statement from the White House and did absolutely nothing to stem the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border.

Since President Biden and Vice President Harris were sworn in, there have been more than one million “gotaways,” tens of thousands of pounds of fentanyl have been seized, and 80 individuals on the terrorist watch list have tried to cross the border in the last six months alone.

We need more than “don’t come.”

There’s no one fix to our nation’s immigration crisis.  We need to secure our border, but we also need to make sure that other nations are held accountable for their role in the crisis.  That’s where the House Foreign Affairs Committee comes in.

This week, we considered the Regional Immigration Diplomacy and Enforcement (RIDE) Act, which would authorize the Secretary of State to negotiate regional immigration agreements with countries like Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.  It’s time for Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Harris to step up and back policies that will secure our border and curb illegal immigration, like the Remain in Mexico policy.  I look forward to this bill becoming law as part of a larger immigration package.

While it’s clear that this Administration would rather just roll out the welcome mat across the southern border, I’m committed to making sure they fulfill their Constitutional duty to protect and defend the United States of America.