In the News

I was recently expressing my conviction that America needs a border wall to a friend and colleague from across the political aisle. He was convinced that we don't need a wall, but rather that we need "border security." Everyone has a pretty good idea what a border wall might be, but we're all a bit fuzzy on what "border security" looks like.

Last week, I spent several hours talking to ranchers and residents who live along the border. Each one forcefully argued in favor of a border wall.

In this time of stasis in Congress and a national security crisis at the border, the president should strongly consider declaring a national emergency on the border and temporarily diverting a small fraction of the national budget to build the border wall. The invasion of illegal aliens has reached the point of a national security threat. Failure to recognize the gravity of the issue is willful submission to cognitive dissonance.

I have heard some Republicans express support for trading DACA for $5 billion of border security. There are several problems that we can easily spot: the definition of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) population is unsettled and so is the amorphous term "border security."

Every American watching the partial government shutdown understands that this is about more than the shutdown.

We have a crisis of illegal immigration on our southern border that includes drug and human smuggling, violence and humanitarian concerns, and environmental wreckage that occurs as hundreds of thousands – in some years, millions – of illegal border crossers discard their garbage into the once pristine deserts and mountains of border states.

Borders are the most fundamental way we identify Americans. Yet a border is more than a physical location, although that's an important part of the equation. A border also marks the enforcement of the laws that we use to build a national community, including providing an effective deterrent against illegal immigration. I represent a border state, and I know the system. If our laws don't work, then our borders don't work.

I recently spoke to a Democrat friend and asked him whether he thought we could reach an agreement to fund a border wall. He assured me that Democrats will never support funding and building a border wall.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, I was among those who interviewed fired FBI Director James Comey on Friday about Hillary's Clinton's email scandal and about the initial stages of the FBI investigation of allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

Former FBI Director James Comey is the heart of the anti-Trump, Mueller investigation. There are indications that he abused his power, along with the leadership team around him, to protect Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and attack Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. And particularly troubling is that the motivation for these steps, appears to have been political in nature.