House GOP set to pivot to border crisis after debt limit battle comes to a close

House Republicans are preparing to pivot to border enforcement issues after the debt limit battle comes to a close.

The GOP-led House passed a bill on Wednesday that raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion through May 2024. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling, it seeks to reduce federal spending by roughly $4.5 trillion over 10 years, in part, by reverting to fiscal year 2022 funding levels and limiting domestic spending growth to 1% annually.

The Senate has yet to vote on the bill, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he opposes the legislation. The White House has said President Biden plans to veto the bill if it passes.

Texas GOP Rep. Troy Nehls said Congress must now address the border crisis, driven by a record level of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

There were 191,899 migrant encounters in the month of March, which represents a 23% increase over the prior month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Many of those apprehended are adults posing as minors to gain entry, Nehls warned.

"We've got a porous southern border, we have to address it, and it is incumbent upon the Republican Party to pass meaningful immigration reform as soon as possible and let the American people know we placed them first," he said Thursday in an interview on "Just the News, Not Noise." 

Texas GOP Rep. Brian Babin slammed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for describing illegal immigration as "irregular migration" in a letter to his colleagues this week.

"It's just another euphemism," Babin said on "Just the News, Not Noise" on Thursday. "It's just the same as he has 'operational control' over the border. They denied there was a border crisis for the longest time. He cannot bring himself to recognize that there is not only a crisis, but an absolute disaster, close to 6 million individuals coming across the border since he has taken office, coming over from 147 different countries.

"Over one million have been apprehended so far just in this fiscal year alone, and as we know, the deadly drugs that are coming in from China through Mexico, killing over 100,000 Americans a year now.

Fentanyl isn't the only grave threat to American health entering through the unsecured border, Babin warned.

"We can't forget about the diseases that are coming in as well," he said, citing "record numbers of tuberculosis and polio that are coming in, diseases that have been really eradicated over the last 100 years."

In South Texas alone, Babin reported, the rate of tuberculosis has tripled.

"And this is a TB type that is really drug-resistant," he emphasized. "It is putting many, many, many Americans in great jeopardy.

"Polio — that terrible, debilitating disease that people were so fearful of back in the '30s, '40s and '50s until they came up with a vaccine for it — now rearing its ugly head again, to start inflicting this horrible damage, crippling children, killing children that we hadn't seen in, really, 50, 60, 70 years."

Babin, who has visited the border numerous times, shared his reaction to the Health and Human Services whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, who told lawmakers this week the federal government is acting as a middleman in a massive child trafficking scheme that involves the cartels and criminal agents on both sides of the border.

"She is telling us the truth," he said. "It's something that we've been suspecting now for well over two years."

Not enough DNA testing is being done to prove the adults apprehended at the border are blood relatives of the children with them, Babin explained. 

"During the Trump administration, they did somehow find the resources to do some of the DNA testing," he said, "but now the Biden administration simply has opened the border up so much that they just process them in by the hundreds of thousands, and they are aiding and abetting child sex rings."

Given the interlocking health, humanitarian and national security crises he sees resulting from the Biden administration's lax border enforcement, Babin is incredulous at the DHS secretary's euphemizing language

"Unbelievable that we are hearing this word 'irregular' migration," he said. "Mayorkas simply will not recognize the fact that we have an enormous problem down there that is changing America forever ... hundreds of suspected terrorists on the terrorist watch list have come [across the border] since this fiscal year, and really he just doesn't seem to have his eyes open. It's crazy."