Texas Public Policy Foundation Chief Executive Officer Greg Sindelar joined a bevy of U.S. civic leaders and border security experts in calling on the new majority in the United States House of Representatives to fulfill its Commitment to America pledge to pass legislation that will end the Biden administration’s catch and release loopholes that have been driving the illegal immigration crisis on the southwest border these past two years.
“At the outset of the current administration in 2021, the secure border policies that were working were quickly and methodically unraveled, step by step, unleashing the current crisis,” said Sindelar. “The new majority in the House should take the same approach, quickly and step by step, to enact legislation that will reverse the crisis,” emphasized Sindelar.
“The single most important measure that put a halt to the border crisis of 2019 was the implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their claims were adjudicated,” said Sindelar. “The Commitment to America’s American Security Task Force explicitly includes ‘the implementation of an MPP that ends the Biden administration’s lax border enforcement’ among the legislative priorities the new House majority has committed to passing and sending to the United States Senate,” the Texas conservative leader added.
Sindelar also reiterated his support of H.R. 29, the Border Safety and Security Act of 2023, which mandates the use of a new MPP program to supplement as needed mandatory detention of illegal border crossers. “H.R. 29 is one of several measures that is consistent with the Commitment to America that need to be passed expeditiously by this new House, along with subsequent measures also elaborated by the American Security Task Force, such as renewing construction of the modern border wall system, fixing the Flores settlement to enable DHS to keep children and their parents together while their immigration cases are pending and reforming the removal process for non-trafficked, unaccompanied minors (UACs) from noncontiguous countries, to ensure consistency.