(WJHL) — Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger is again in D.C. after visiting the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Republican representing Tennessee’s First Congressional District met with Border Patrol brokers on the disaster they’re now coping with as extra migrants flee nations like Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to search out refuge the U.S.
Rep. Harshbarger went to the Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas Sunday with a gaggle of Republicans on the Homeland Safety Committee to see the border disaster up shut.
“The U.S., the federal authorities, is changing into the largest facilitator of human smuggling throughout the border,” she stated.
Primarily based on conversations Harshbarger had with federal brokers, she says cash must be redirected again to ending former President Donald Trump’s border wall.
“The Border Patrol brokers instructed us the place the wall was constructed it deterred 80 p.c of unlawful and illicit conduct. They went some other place. That wall works,” stated Harshbarger.
She says it’s a humanitarian disaster each inside border services and as kids cross from Mexico to the USA.
“That’s like my son sending my grandson throughout the border by himself. It’s unbelievable,” stated Harshbarger. “It doesn’t simply tug your heartstrings it offers you a righteous anger that claims this has to cease.”
The congresswoman believes the issues on the border are enjoying into the drug downside in Northeast Tennessee as meth and fentanyl come throughout the border.
“Sheriff Dexter Lunceford from Carter County stated he has seen a 40% enhance in methamphetamine. Properly there is no such thing as a marvel. They’ll stroll it proper in on these components of the border that haven’t been completed,” she stated.
Harshbarger provides one of many greatest nationwide safety threats she witnessed comes as patrol brokers are being pulled from securing the border.
“They needed to pull 40% of border brokers off of border patrol to place them in processing facilities as a result of they’re at 420% capability. That could be a downside.”
She stated with these services being so overcrowded, she is worried a few COVID-19 surge on the border as she says the services are holding 4 occasions the quantity of individuals they’re meant to.
Rep. Harshbarger posted on Twitter that she has joined a few of her colleagues in writing a letter to one in all our nation’s prime well being consultants, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on what they are saying is a public well being emergency on the border.
The letter shares the lawmakers’ issues about border services not with the ability to correctly mitigate COVID-19.
It additionally urges Fauci to talk out on the disaster.
