Congressman Burgess discusses immigration enforcement

DALLAS - A North Texas congressman is back from a trip to the southern border. He calls the situation as bad as he’s ever seen it.

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess recently took his ninth trip to the border since 2014. He learned about a flu outbreak in a McCallen detention center that stopped the migrant process for a day. People are arriving in the country already sick, he said.

Southwest border apprehensions are up sharply this year. From January to April, the number jumped dramatically.

“It’s a significant amount of money. We take a child in, they stay for 30-60 days. We have to do a background check on the family that they’re going to be placed with. I want that to happen. I don’t want these kids going off where you don’t know who’s going to be taking care of them. The fact of the matter remains, if we just change our asylum laws, if people who arrive from noncontiguous countries who are found to have no credible asylum claim could be sent home within three days, that would end this problem,” Burgess said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has repeatedly found conditions poor and ineffective at federal refugee facilities.

Funding for refugee resettlement runs out on June 5, which he said will add to the crisis.