Mayra Flores Targets Border Crisis in First Bill
A newly elected Republican Latina from Texas made her first move in Congress, putting forth a bipartisan bill meant to have a fast impact on the border crisis.
Rep. Mayra Flores, who delivered the first upset to Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections after winning a special election in a border district in June, joined an Ohio Republican and two Democrats Tuesday to debut a proposal that would help law enforcement more efficiently respond to cross-border criminal activity, the Washington Examiner has learned. The Rio Grande Valley congresswoman is married to a Border Patrol agent.
Flores teamed up with Reps. Dave Joyce (R-OH), Susie Lee (D-NV), and Chris Pappas (D-NH) to introduce legislation aimed at strengthening law enforcement communication and coordination on the U.S.-Mexico border through the creation of physical hubs where federal, state, local, and tribal police can come together under one roof and work collectively to defeat cartels that make billions of dollars smuggling and trafficking people and drugs.
“I came to Congress promising to solve problems confronting our district, and this is exactly what my first bill delivers,” Flores said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “It is evident, from what we are witnessing at our southern border, that the only group benefiting from this self-inflicted chaos are criminals, drug and human traffickers, and the cartels. Our bill will put an end to this by bettering our law enforcement coordination and their ability to counter these dangerous groups.”
REPUBLICANS DEBUT 2023 CRISIS TO END BORDER CRISIS
The Advanced Border Coordination Act builds off the idea of state-run fusion centers, which act as centralized hubs for local, state, and tribal authorities to work in one space. This bill would require at least two such centers along the 2,000-mile-long southern border.
Officers and agents inside would be able to streamline individual operations on the border, share information about investigations and intelligence, and carry out joint workforce training.
“As a former prosecutor, I know how successful joint operations centers can be, especially when it comes to detecting drug and human trafficking, and have no doubt they will help us address the national security and humanitarian crisis that has exploded at our southern border,” Joyce said in a statement, referring to the record-high numbers of illegal immigrant encounters at the border on an annual and monthly basis.
Pappas, a Democrat, said the joint centers would help law enforcement “crack down on illegal drug trafficking and better respond to the crisis at the southern border” by allowing agencies to work in tandem on similar or overlapping matters. Federal departments, including Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice, would have representatives at each site.
The proposal comes 22 months after the Trump administration shuttered a 60-person federal task force on the border. The DHS Joint Task Force West was closed in late 2020, though the decision to close it down was a year in the making.
In 2020, the DHS Office of the Inspector General released a report that stated the task force was a waste of money and resources, effectively approving the department’s pre-report reason to shut it down, calling into question whether a new task force (albeit one that combines federal, state, local, and tribal police under one roof) is an exception.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The defunct federal joint task force was created by former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson in 2014 as a way for Customs and Border Protection, a 60,000-person federal law enforcement agency, to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Coast Guard, as well as specialty offices at DHS headquarters, to share information more easily and respond collectively to border problems.
CBP and ICE have similar responsibilities, but they lack an official channel to share information and avoid duplicating efforts. The task force was intended to serve as the point between all DHS agencies that work at the border.
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