Small Wisconsin community proves border crisis isn’t just a big city problem

Big cities are not the only areas dealing with the border crisis – rural America has become overwhelmed as well, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil from Wisconsin said on a media call.

Whitewater, a city of 15,000 residing within Steil’s district, has seen a dramatic increase of migrants over the past two years – around 1,000 new people, by conservative estimates, according to Steil.

He said the numbers have overwhelmed the unprepared and underfunded city, with living conditions deteriorating, housing and transportation overwhelmed, an overburdened school system and an increase in gang and drug activities.

“We hear about these numbers at the border and in the news – I think sometimes it's hard to put those in context,” Jake Curtis from the Institute for Reforming Government said on the call. “This really shouldn't be a partisan issue, in the sense that the numbers are very revealing. We simply have an exponential increase in the number of border encounters, and the numbers are simply staggering.”

The IRG published a report on Wisconsin’s immigration crisis in June, based on thousands of pages of public records. Local leadership in Whitewater has been reaching out to state and federal officials, including the White House, since January with little response.

“They've kind of been left to deal with this issue on their own,” said Curtis. “If you have an increase of a new population of seven to twelve percent, how do you pay for the increased school resource officers, increased police officers? And we can go through some of the more specific things, but there's just not enough funding.”

In the meantime, intoxicated and unlicensed drivers, child abuse and truancy, and domestic violence have been on the rise as the migrants – who primarily arrived from like Venezuela and Nicaragua – have difficulty acclimating to American laws.

Steil called Whitewater a case study of federal immigration policies under the Biden administration impacting not only big cities but also local communities.

“Not always is it understood how the broken border policies of the Biden administration are impacting smaller communities, and in particular our home state of Wisconsin,” Steil said. “And so focusing this in a kind of almost like a case study, if you will, of the impact that the broken borders have on communities all across the country, and recognizing the impact that it’s having in Whitewater is essential, and also recognizing the policies matter.”

The city is unable to send away the migrants because they have temporary asylum status under the Biden administration’s “catch and release” policy, where migrants wait in America for their claims to be processed in an immigration court.

“Traditionally, we think individuals, when they're trying to gain entry into the country, evade or avoid Border Patrol. The reality is, the new strategy over the last few years has been to seek asylum. And so individuals essentially surrender themselves to the Border Patrol and declare that they're seeking asylum. They are ultimately given a hearing, and they're given a hearing date, which could be years down the line. So the question becomes, well, what do they do in the meantime?” Curtis said.

Local officials in Whitewater believe the abundance of student housing left vacant during COVID-19 and the surrounding farming and manufacturing communities in need of workers are what contributed to the flux of migrants in such a remote area.

Steil believes politicians are reluctant to truly speak in depth about the drug and border crisis because the root cause is a political choice. So even though the border crisis impacts people of both parties, it is treated as more of a partisan issue, he said.

“The policy underlying this is a choice. And the contrast between the two leading presidential candidates is so stark on this issue, I think it naturally defaults to a partisan dialogue,” said Steil. “I've been supportive of Whitewater trying to obtain federal grants to make sure that they can navigate this in the short term. How do we help the school district? How do we help our first responders in Whitewater? But that doesn't solve the underlying challenge – that solves the effects of this bad policy, but it doesn't solve the bad policy itself.”

Steil also argued a welcoming immigration policy is not dichotomous to national security.

“You can have a pro legal immigration system while wanting to secure the border. You want them to be able to come through the door legally, not come across the border illegally,” said Steil. “Those individuals that claim they are pro immigrant by allowing the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border are completely ignoring the fact of how absolutely dangerous this is for individuals to make this journey across the US-Mexico border, which is overwhelmingly controlled by the Mexican drug cartels.”

Dramatic change at the federal level is needed, Steil argued, such as reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy where migrants wait in Mexico or their home country as their asylum claim is decided, rather than within the United States.

“The president of the United States right now has the opportunity to do four key things immediately, today, if he chose. He could reinstate Remain in Mexico. He could end catch-and-release. He could end abuse of the parole system. He could restart border wall construction immediately. All of those are under the authority of the President of the United States with no additional legislative action,” said Steil. “But this election will ultimately be a decision in the direction that we're going to go on our border policy: to continue down the road of the broken border policies where millions of people are coming to the United States and impact communities large and small, or whether or not we return to a secure border policy.”