Texas Border Business
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr., chairman of the Texas Border Coalition (TBC) today issued the following statement in response to President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress:
“We commend President Biden for tackling big issues in his address to Congress. We support his action to battle the coronavirus and rebuild the economy. We have championed immigration reform and additional funding for the land ports of entry for more than a decade and will continue to support the initiatives outlined by the president tonight.
“Without a long-term solution to rebuild a broken immigration system, the migration problems that confront border communities cannot be solved.
“In addition to the long-term solutions proposed by the president tonight, we need immediate and short-term answers as well.
“While the Texas Border Coalition understood and accepted temporary limits on non-essential cross-border travel during the height of the pandemic, the “temporary” limits have now lasted an entire year as of March 2021. Severely restricting cross-border travel in this way is not an effective long-term policy and causes severe economic harm to border communities.
“Following the president’s orders to halt construction of the border wall, the government has left levees protecting border communities breached. As hurricane season approaches, it is critical the federal government correct this public endangerment. It would be unconscionable not to restore the flood prevention infrastructure destroyed by construction of the border wall. This urgent need cannot wait and must be addressed now.“Finally, we support the bipartisan Border Solution Act to address short-term problems challenging our communities. This proposal, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Kyrsten Sinema and U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Tony Gonzales would improve both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s and the Department of Justice’s capacity to manage migration influxes and adjudicate asylum claims in a timely manner, protect unaccompanied migrant children, reduce impact on local communities, ensure migrants are treated fairly and humanely, and ultimately deter those who do not have realistic asylum claims from placing themselves in danger by making the treacherous journey to our southern border.”
