June 20, 2022

Securing Our Southern Border

Friend, 

Last week, I participated in the first congressional hearing at the U.S. Mexico border in over two years. As a part of the Select Committee on the Economy, I got to see the crisis at our southern border first hand. During the hearing, I discussed how the southern border crisis is not only impacting communities near the border, it also impacts us right here in Wisconsin. 

For example, the Department of Homeland Security seized over 13,000 pounds of illegal fentanyl, which is roughly 3 billion lethal doses. And that's just what we were able to catch. Fentanyl is crossing our borders and killing countless Americans. In Racine County alone last year, 68 people died from illicit fentanyl overdoses. This is just one of the reasons we need to secure the border. 

The Select Committee on the Economy once again escaped the DC swamp and held a hearing at the U.S.-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas. This is the same bipartisan committee that held a hearing in Kenosha, Wisconsin a few months ago. 

The border crisis numbers are staggering.

There have been 2.8 million illegal border encounters since President Biden took office. That’s 3 times the population of the state of Delaware. And it includes over 3,600 unaccompanied minors. That's 50 yellow school buses of kids without parents making the perilous journey.

Sadly, many of these children are victims of human trafficking. These traffickers often abuse females and especially young girls. Our law enforcement at the border is being stretched thin because the Biden administration refuses to take action. It’s having deadly consequences.

Drug cartels are taking advantage of Biden’s open border policies to smuggle poisonous fentanyl across the border for distribution into every city in America. Last year, drug overdoses hit a new record at over 100 thousand lives, fueled by opioids like fentanyl. Americans keep dying while the cartels make billions of dollars on human trafficking and fentanyl because our border is not secure. 

Today, every town in America is facing problems stemming from a porous border. It's time for the federal government to secure our border and end the humanitarian crisis. 

To watch the full committee hearing, click here. 

On Wisconsin,

Bryan Steil
Member of Congress

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