MISSION, TEXAS — "We are witnessing a human tragedy," says House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul at a press conference along the waters of the Rio Grande in Anzalduas Park near McAllen as the Biden administration escalates its harassment of Texas for enforcing the international border with Mexico.
McCaul and a bipartisan delegation of House lawmakers from Texas — Democrat Henry Cuellar and Republicans Monica De La Cruz and Randy Weber — have just finished a boat tour with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Behind McCaul is a sign declaring "BEWARE OF ALLIGATORS" and, beyond that, two DPS boats loaded with firepower and ballistic shields. On the opposite shore, a few individuals gather to watch what's going on from Mexico.
McCaul and his colleagues are in Texas to see, first-hand, what federal border patrol agents and state authorities are facing as new records continue to be set for the number of illegal immigrants encountered along the southern border. In addition to the boat tour on the Rio Grande, McCaul and his fellow lawmakers received a briefing from border officials and toured a processing facility — one the Biden administration continues to prevent reporters from accessing.
Following his remarks at the Rio Grande, McCaul jumps into the back of an SUV with me for the 25-minute drive back to McAllen.
Among the compounding crises created by Biden's policies is the escalating threat to America's national security. McCaul, who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee in the 113th, 115th, and 116th Congresses, recalls how concerns about terrorists slipping into the U.S. along with other illegal immigrants aren't new.
"When I chaired Homeland — and I was getting briefed by FBI, DHS, and the Intelligence Community — that was my first question. How many SIA — special interest aliens — versus other-than-Mexican, and then the last, the most serious: how many on the terror watch list?" McCaul explains. "If we ever got to 300, that would be a big red flag," he warns.
The most up-to-date numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), show that there have been 312 border patrol encounters between ports of entry with illegal immigrants who matched those in the U.S. government's consolidated Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS) from the beginning of FY2021 through December 22, 2023. Since FY2024 began on October 1, 2023, there have been 30 such terrorist database matches.
"That is a risk this country cannot afford," McCaul tells me. "I remember the height of ISIS and the caliphate, the external operations to kill Americans but also trying to get in. I mean, think about the FBI director talking about Hamas coming in," McCaul continues. "It's all tied together: You've got Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, you've got Pakistan, Afghanistan, all these Middle Easterners, radicalized Islamists that can get easy access into the United States. "That alone is worth our time and attention and money to secure the border," declares McCaul. "Beyond that, how are we possibly going to sustain 8 million people with no legal status? They only go into this massive criminal enterprise that I believe Secretary Mayorkas has created," says McCaul. "And it's a trafficking, MS-13 sex trafficking, enterprise."
Turning back to the immediate issues at the U.S.-Mexico border — to which Townhall had a front-row seat on Friday night in Hidalgo — McCaul notes the compounding consequences of the administration's open-border policies.
"This is over-capacity, [and] when we are over-capacity they have to release them with a notice to appear," McCaul notes of the Biden administration's return to catch-and-release of illegal immigrants. "My very first bill in office, 20 years ago, was to end catch-and-release," he recalls. "And here we are. We had fixed it with Remain in Mexico policies that I helped effectuate and passed out of my committee," continues McCaul. "And Biden rescinded that."
As Townhall reported previously, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) released a list of policies enacted by President Biden and his administration that caused the border crisis by setting off a surge of illegal immigrants from around the world, undermined enforcement of the international border, and began mass-releasing unlawful entrants into the U.S.
Facing what he calls "the same problem again," McCaul says the U.S. "can either build more detention space, or we can change the policy." The latter, he notes "won't cost anything" but has to be done "with the cooperation with Mexico," hence McCaul and his delegation's trip to meet with Mexican President Obrador and the candidates running to succeed him in the country's 2024 election.
McCaul says Mexico must understand the need to get "back to the policies that were working and to persuade them it's in their best interest as well" and notes that Texas is Mexico's largest trading partner. In 2021, Texas sent $122.7 billion worth of exports to Mexico and imported $108.4 billion from its southern neighbor.
In something of an allusion to the Reagan-esque "if you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat," McCaul says that "there are a lot of leverage points we can put on Mexico" but says it's not apparent what, if anything, the Biden administration has done to use any U.S. leverage over Mexico to address the border crisis the president still denies is a crisis.
The bottom line according to McCaul: Meaningfully addressing the border crisis "can't happen without the will of the President and the will of Congress." He references his meeting at the White House last week with Biden and congressional leaders regarding the president's supplemental funding request and says "what was interesting was every Democrat agreed that the border needs to be secure and that it was a problem. Even the president said it's broken and needs to be fixed," McCaul adds. "But does he have the will to do it?"
That remains to be seen — as does the ability of both chambers of Congress to agree on funding beyond the continuing resolutions that have kept the government open so far this year. But McCaul, while noting the Senate is "very tightly holding" the details of their bill, says he's heard that "there are some political asylum reforms." Such changes to asylum are "getting to the key of the problem," he adds. On a hopeful note, McCaul predicts that "if Schumer and McConnell reach something that's satisfactory to Johnson and the House, I think the president's going to have a hard time not signing that into law."