U.S. House Republicans celebrate border security bill. What lawmakers from Texas had to say

WASHINGTON — Texas Republicans in Congress celebrated the U.S. House passing a hard-fought border security bill that was crafted with help from Reps. Chip Roy, Michael McCaul and John Carter but passed without a single Democratic vote last week.

During a charged partisan debate, Roy, of Hays County, described the need for a crackdown after the “abject failure” of the Biden administration’s immigration policies allowed a “wide-open border.” U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, said the bill was “anti-immigrant” and would “destroy the asylum system.”

The 219-213 vote Thursday (with two Republican votes against the measure) underscored the divide between the GOP and Biden by calling for a return to Trump-era policies, including restarting construction of the border wall for 900 miles and ending most asylum protections.

The bill, HR 2, is titled the Secure the Border Act, but Democrats on the House floor kept calling it the Child Deportation Act.

“We're here today because of the abject failure of the administration to do its fundamental duty to protect the United States,” Roy said. “We have a wide-open border — empowering cartels, empowering China, to the detriment of the American citizens and to the migrants that seek to come here — supposedly in the name of compassion.”

Roy tried to get a slimmed down border security bill through the House when the Republicans took back the majority in January but ran into stiff resistance from another Texas Republican, Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, who represents 800 miles of the U.S.-Texas border in the 23^rd Congressional District, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, and wanted to ensure that immigrant protections were included in the bill.

“Representing more than 40% of our southern border, I know firsthand the struggles that border communities, Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officers face each and every day,” said Gonzales, who helped negotiate asylum protections in the final bill. He still wants terrorist organizations labeled as cartels, but that was removed from the bill after conservatives said it would expand the claims that could be made by asylum-seekers about whom they were fleeing.

Some of the most passionate arguments by a Republican came from Austin's McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who, at times with his voice almost cracking, declared the bill a victory for “those living on the front lines of this crisis in states like Texas.”

The Republican bill eliminates the controversial “catch and release” practice that releases undocumented immigrants into the U.S. while they await a hearing.

“My very first bill when I came to Congress was to end ‘catch and release,’” McCaul said, “and here we are 20 years later, and we’re right back to it.”

Addressing the growing number of immigrants awaiting entry at the border as Title 42 enforcement — the Trump-era effort that allowed for quick expulsions of migrants due to COVID-19 concerns — expired, McCaul said: “This is unsustainable. We are facing a humanitarian crisis of generational proportions.

“For two years, we have seen migrant encounters, drug trafficking and cartel activity skyrocket due to the Biden administration’s failed open-border policies.”

Casar, who was elected to Congress in 2022, had a different perspective.

“I’m the son of immigrants and proud to represent the heart of Texas here in the United States Congress,” he said. “For generations, my family has moved back and forth between Texas and Mexico, Mexico and Texas. People immigrate.”

He described the GOP bill as “cruel, extreme and not based on fact.”

“It would destroy the asylum system, cage children and families indefinitely, and make the situation at our border worse,” Casar said. “In fact, this bill would eliminate funding for much of the remaining legal immigration system that we have, leading to chaos.”

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, the other Democrat who represents portions of Central Texas, called out the GOP on economic grounds.

“Our economy is crying out ‘Help Wanted,’ to which Republicans respond, ‘Keep out’ and ‘Build a wall to wall us off from the rest of the world,’” he said.

“Certainly, we cannot take everyone who wants to come here,” he continued, but he blamed Republicans for “anti-immigrant hysteria” that benefits them politically.

Carter, R-Round Rock, who has worked on immigration issues on the House Appropriations Committee, said, “For far too long, cartels have manipulated our nation's immigration laws to make billions peddling drugs and human trafficking.”

The bill would address a ploy used by cartels to have groups pose as families — which leaves unaccompanied children vulnerable to abuse — by making them stay in Mexico or at a residential facility until their claim is heard, officials said.

“This administration's decisions have created an unprecedented rise in illegal border crossings directly resulting in over 6 million new migrants in the United States since Biden took office,” Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco, said.

U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, said he supported the bill because it “is about stopping the fentanyl from flowing across our border, stopping the human trafficking of migrants and children, and enforcing our immigration laws.”

After the House’s approval, the bill will now move to the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, for consideration.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Border security: What U.S. representatives from Texas say about HR 2