Congress Keeps Stiffing the Agents Who Stop the Invasion
Congress should fully fund the Department of Homeland Security so that Border Patrol can hire back toward its authorized strength of 26,000 agents and ICE can fill its 41,500 detention beds. In fiscal year 2024, CBP recorded more than 2.9 million encounters nationwide, which means the current force of roughly 19,730 agents is stretched past the breaking point.
The number 2.9 million is not a talking point from a campaign ad. It is the official tally from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for encounters at and between ports of entry during the twelve months that ended September 30, 2024. That figure dwarfs the population of New Mexico and rivals the population of Kansas. It represents millions of decisions by foreign nationals to gamble that American law no longer matters. And in most cases, they were right.
Border Patrol currently fields around 19,730 agents, well below the 26,000 that Congress has authorized and even further below what a 2,000-mile frontier with a failed state next door demands. ICE detention funding sits at about 41,500 beds, yet the agency routinely detains fewer because the money is tied up in bureaucratic knots and litigation invented by open-borders lawyers. When beds disappear, aliens disappear into the interior. That is not compassion. It is chaos by design.
The Price of Open Borders Is Paid in American Neighborhoods
Sanctuary jurisdictions refuse to honor ICE detainers, so criminal aliens who should be deported walk out of county jails and back into American communities. ICE data show that hundreds of thousands of removable aliens with criminal records remain at large, and taxpayers spend billions on emergency rooms, schools, and public defenders for people who were never supposed to settle here.
San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City have all spent billions sheltering migrants who arrived with no legal claim to remain. New York City alone budgeted more than $4 billion for migrant services across fiscal years 2023 and 2024. That money did not come from Mayor Adams' personal account. It came from working families who already struggled with rent, groceries, and gas. Every dollar spent on a hotel room for an illegal border crosser is a dollar not spent on a veteran, a homeless citizen, or a student in a failing public school.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has documented for years that a small share of the population commits a large share of violent crime. When sanctuary laws prevent ICE from taking custody of deportable inmates at the jailhouse door, those offenders re-offend against Americans who had no say in the policy. ICE's website lists thousands of detainer requests that counties simply ignored in recent years. The victims are not abstract statistics. They are daughters, sons, and parents whose government chose political correctness over public safety.
Mexico and the Cartels Are Winning Because We Chose to Lose
The Biden administration's policies handed control of the southern border to human-smuggling cartels, who now operate a multi-billion-dollar industry from northern Mexico into Texas, Arizona, and California. A single crossing can cost a migrant between $5,000 and $10,000, and the cartels pocket that money while Texas ranchers keep finding bodies on their land.
The cartels do not run a charity. They tax migrants, extort families back home, and force women and children into indentured servitude to pay off smuggling debts. The United Nations International Organization for Migration recorded hundreds of migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, and the real toll is almost certainly higher because many bodies are never found. Brooks County, Texas, a rural stretch of ranchland north of the Rio Grande, has recovered remains every summer for more than a decade. Those deaths are the direct result of an advertised border.
When word spreads around the world that crossing is easy, people come. When they come, they enrich the cartels. When the cartels get richer, they corrupt Mexican officials, flood American streets with fentanyl, and expand their networks into every major city. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels are the primary source of fentanyl killing more than 70,000 Americans each year. An open border is not a humanitarian policy. It is a profit center for the most vicious criminal organizations on earth.
The Solution Is Enforcement, Not Another Amnesty Commission
Restoring order starts with completing physical barriers, ending catch-and-release, and deporting those who crossed illegally after January 20, 2025, while the fiscal year 2026 homeland security bill adds detention beds and strips federal grants from sanctuary cities. Congress has the money; it simply lacks the will to protect American citizens first.
The 1996 immigration laws already give the federal government the tools it needs. What is missing is the courage to use them. Illegal entry is a crime. Overstaying a visa is a civil violation with a clear remedy. Sanctuary cities obstruct both by refusing to cooperate with federal officers. The Trump administration's first term proved that Remain in Mexico, asylum agreements with Central American nations, and wall construction drive down crossings. Within months of implementing those policies, monthly encounters fell by tens of thousands.
Congress should not wait for another caravan to reach Eagle Pass. It should fund the fence, fund the agents, fund the beds, and remove the judges and bureaucrats who treat deportation orders as suggestions. The American people have voted for border security in poll after poll. They deserve a government that stops apologizing for enforcing its own laws.
