John Cornyn: “yesterday I had a chance to sit down with a group of my constituents visiting DC from the Rio Grande Valley. For those…”

“yesterday I had a chance to sit down with a group of my constituents visiting DC from the Rio Grande Valley. For those who have never been to the Rio Grande Valley, I highly recommend a visit. It is a beautiful region, a unique part of our country, rich in culture and history and full of hard-working people and businesses that fuel our State's and the Nation's thriving economy. As record numbers of people continue to mass migrate across our southern border, it has become one of the most heavily impacted areas in our country, and it is working hard to manage the growing humanitarian crisis. Last month alone, 144,000 people were detained coming across our border. It was the largest monthly total since 2006. It only begins to paint the picture of how challenging this mass migration has become. The vast majority of the people who crossed last month were either unaccompanied children or families, putting a strain on resources across the border, particularly when it comes to detention facilities. It is no mistake that the human smugglers, whom we call coyotes back home, have figured out that if you can smuggle an unaccompanied child or family across the border, you vastly improve the chances of successfully placing them in the United States. That is because they understand our laws better than many Members of Congress do, and they know how to exploit them for their financial gain.…”