Texas Border Coalition (TBC) Immediate Past Chairman and current Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr., and El Paso County Commissioner David Stout, current TBC chairman, today issued the following statements regarding President Biden’s pending visit to Brownsville, where he is expected to meet with U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel, law enforcement, and local leaders:
“First, I would thank President Biden for his leadership and what it means to Cameron County: new infrastructure projects at the international bridge, the port, the highways and causeways, and funding for healthcare, broadband, and workforce training,” said Judge Treviño. “Cameron County and the Texas Border Coalition strongly support your border supplemental request for more Customs inspectors, Border Patrol, immigration judges, new asylum officers, grants for migrant shelter and services, and deployment of more equipment at the ports of entry to detect smuggled drugs and people. We have been advocating for those things for more than a decade.”
“To achieve the kind of success desired by the American people, we can no longer only invest in deterrence-only strategies and must be serious about meaningful immigration policies reflecting economic and social reality; for example, the bipartisan Dignity Act, which includes increasing pathways to legal entry like expanding work visas, especially for agricultural work, giving permanent relief to the Dreamers, and asylum reform that doesn’t gut the asylum system,” said Commissioner Stout. “Texas border communities are thriving, safe cities and counties.
“We appreciate the investment by this Administration in El Paso and other border ports, and now seek solutions to national problems involving immigration and border management that are on our front doorsteps. Too many elected leaders have looked at these challenges and have seen partisan political opportunities instead of the bipartisan solutions they can be. Ours is a nascent success story that needs to be built upon to achieve our local, state, and national goals.”