Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a national security bill, intertwining it with foreign aid and a deal to maintain a 35-year national ban on fully plastic ghost guns. Once again, our national security is being used as a political pawn, with Democrats linking border security to unrelated agendas. H.R.2, also known as the Secure the Border Act, has been waiting to be brought to the floor but has received generally negative responses because its sole intention is to close our border. This is why it should be passed instead of Chuck Schumer's Border bill. Congress must pass H.R.2 OR separate this new national security bill from the billions of dollars in foreign aid they have grouped it with!

On Sunday, Senate Democrats released their $118.3 billion Emergency National Security Bill, which includes $60.1 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, another $10 billion for Palestine and Ukraine “humanitarian efforts,” and about $20 billion in “border investments.” Realistically, this $20 billion will probably be squandered elsewhere. The allocation includes funds to hire new asylum and border patrol officials, expand the capacity of detention facilities, and increase screenings for fentanyl and other illicit drugs. To put it bluntly, Congress plans to spend over $84.2 billion on other countries, and only “about” $20 billion on the crisis at our borders.

So, what would this bill do for our border, especially considering its intention to send $84.2 billion overseas? Instead of calling for a state of emergency and closing the border entirely, putting up more barriers and razor wire, this bill would create a “trigger" that would effectively close the border to migrants trying to cross into the United States without authorization. The trigger would be “tripped” if the average number of migrants encountered by border officials exceeded 5,000 over the course of a week or 8,500 on any given day. Encounters would have to fall to a daily average of 75 percent of those thresholds, again over the course of a week, for affected intake processes to start up again.

In short, illegal immigrants CAN still come through the border illegally as long as the average number of migrant encounters does not exceed 5,000 over the course of a week or 8,500 a day. It's important to note that this number refers to the encounters the border patrol reports; it does not include the illegals who come through our open border without any encounters. This bill is nothing but a sneaky maneuver to send billions overseas while putting a band-aid on the gaping wound that is our border.

This leads us to the “Secure the Border Act” or H.R.2. H.R.2 is a bill aimed at addressing border security without political maneuvering and has been consistently rejected by the Senate. Democrats like Chuck Schumer seem unwilling to prioritize the safety of American citizens without extracting concessions.

Congress must push back against Schumer's do-nothing legislation and actually pass legislation that works and aids the people. We the people refuse to send more of our taxpayer dollars overseas, we refuse to have our national security used as a political pawn unless we shell out more money to foreign nations; enough is enough. The Emergency National Security Bill is nothing but taxation without representation, and ALL of Congress must push against it and instead pass H.R.2!