Last month the voters sent a clear message: we’re fed up with business as usual in Washington, and it’s time for action.
Nowhere is this more important than on border security and immigration. The crisis has reached a breaking point, and the American people are fed up.
That’s why I am glad to see President-Elect Trump is considering House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul to be his Secretary of Homeland Security. He is the best pick.
We need someone like McCaul—a lifelong Texan who knows every inch of the border—to secure our territory once and for all and protect American sovereignty.
He has called for a border security surge so that we can gain operational control to keep criminals, cartels, terrorists, and illegals from infiltrating our country.
And he has the ability to push an emergency plan through Congress to get the wall built quickly and put in place multi-layered defenses.
But we also need to urgently scrap President Obama’s politically-correct counterterrorism policies and reckless immigration actions. Jihadists have exploited virtually every route to get into America—as tourists, students, immigrants, and refugees.
McCaul has laid out plans for ramping up security to block terrorists from using any of these pathways into the United States.
He joined me in seeking a suspension of immigration from countries that have been compromised by terrorism, like Syria, and has championed “extreme vetting” policies that would make it harder for jihadists to exploit our immigration programs.
It must also be the new Administration’s top priority to deter further illegal immigration. And McCaul has already said he would strongly back President Trump’s plan to toss out Obama’s unlawful executive actions.
Having watched him for years in Congress, I know he would end catch-and-release policies and enforce expedited removal of illegal aliens that sneak across our borders.
We can also count on him to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities that flagrantly ignore our immigration laws, while aggressively deporting criminal aliens from coast to coast.
The work can’t stop there, though. I applaud McCaul for pledging to mandate and expand E-Verify, a system that will keep illegals from taking away American jobs, and I believe he would overhaul our government’s broken guest-worker policies.
Finally, we must figure out how to crack down on people who overstay their visas, which now account for almost half of all illegal immigration in the country. They come through the front door, but then they never leave.
McCaul has pushed to implement a rigorous entry-exit tracking system using biometric technology to confirm that people who should leave have done so. If they don’t, we need to find and deport them.
This work is too important to trust to a novice. We can’t afford to have someone run the Department of Homeland Security who is learning on the job.
Michael McCaul would be ready to go on day one, and I’m glad President Trump is considering him. #MakeAmericaSafeAgain