Republican Congressman: Trump’s Border Crisis Is a ‘Myth’

A conversation with Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who knows the border better than most of his colleagues

By ANDY KROLL

Excerpt

WASHINGTON — Congressman Will Hurd of Texas is an increasingly lonely voice in the “build the wall” Republican Party of Donald Trump. A 41-year-old former undercover CIA officer, Hurd represents one of the largest congressional districts in America, Texas’ 23rd, a vast expanse of land roughly the size of Georgia that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso.

Hurd’s district includes 820 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, more than any other member of the House of Representatives. But if you’re expecting Hurd, who was narrowly re-elected to a third term last year, to support President Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” and stand with the decision to partially shut down the federal government over the fight, you’ve got it all wrong. Trump’s border crisis is a “myth,” Hurd tells Rolling Stone, and a wall made of cement or steel slats is a “third-century solution to a 21st-century problem.”

“What I always say is building a wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security,” Hurd says.

He is one of the few Republicans to break ranks and vote with Democrats to approve funding to reopen the government. On Wednesday, he announced that he’d landed a coveted seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, bringing the perspective of someone who actually knows the border to Congress’ main government-funding committee.

Rolling Stone caught up with Hurd in his office on Capitol Hill to discuss the “wall,” what it’s like to represent nearly half of the entire U.S.-Mexico border and his idea for a modern-day Marshall Plan to address the root causes of the social and economic crisis in Latin America that has led to so many immigrants fleeing north and seeking refuge in the U.S. The conversation follows, lightly edited for length and clarity.

The word that we keep hearing from President Trump is that there’s a “crisis” at the border. Is there a crisis at the border?
If there is a crisis, why are the people that are dealing with it not being paid? That’s the first step.

Good question.
This is an issue that has transcended multiple administrations. I think $67 billion of drugs coming into our country is a crisis. Now, I also think when you think of a crisis, that means people are afraid to leave their homes, right? El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States of America. The same can be said about Del Rio, Presidio and Eagle Pass, places I represent.

It’s a problem that should be solved. Yes, last year 400,000 people tried to come into our country illegally, and that’s a decrease in 80 percent from 2000. But 400,000 is still a big number.

When I crisscross my district, the thing I hear the most, people are like, “We need workers.” Whether it’s agriculture or artificial intelligence, we need workers. Why aren’t we also talking about streamlining this immigration process so that we get people here legally who are going to contribute to our economy? It’s a problem that needs to be solved. I think it requires us to be cool, level-headed and talk about those solutions.

What you’ve described sounds like a number of issues that could be solved with different policies. It doesn’t sound like: We’re going to shut down the government and keep it shut down because this crisis is so dire.
No. Again, if you’re dealing with a crisis, you need all hands on deck. Another example, with the Department of Homeland Security. The average large American business deals with 54 million cyber-intrusions a year. The DHS entity that is responsible for coordinating across the federal government and the private sector, they’re at 60-percent staff. Not paying the people and furloughing the people dealing with this problem doesn’t make any sense.

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, speaks during a news conference on the use of the “queen-of-the-hill” rule for DACA legislation in the House on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

 

What you’ve described sounds like a number of issues that could be solved with different policies. It doesn’t sound like: We’re going to shut down the government and keep it shut down because this crisis is so dire.
No. Again, if you’re dealing with a crisis, you need all hands on deck. Another example, with the Department of Homeland Security. The average large American business deals with 54 million cyber-intrusions a year. The DHS entity that is responsible for coordinating across the federal government and the private sector, they’re at 60-percent staff. Not paying the people and furloughing the people dealing with this problem doesn’t make any sense.

Having personally gone to the border—
Where did you go?

I’ve been to El Paso. I’ve been to Nogales in Arizona. Laredo. Eagle Pass. There’s really no substitute for going, is there? I feel like you shouldn’t be able to talk about the border until you’ve actually gone.
(Laughs) I wish that was a requirement.

Can you describe for someone who has not seen what you’ve seen what the border actually looks like?
Roughly 2,000 miles. The number in Texas is about 1,200, from El Paso to Harlingen. The border is broken up into multiple sectors. I have four sectors just in my district. I represent 820 miles of the border, 29 counties, two time zones. My area is larger than 26 states, roughly the size of Georgia. In some parts of the district, it’s the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in North America. You can see for dozens of miles in one direction.

Border Patrol’s response time in some areas is measured in hours to days. If your response time is measured in hours to days, then a wall is actually not a physical barrier. But where there’s cities, where there’s urban-to-urban contact, some kind of physical barrier makes sense, because it helps Border Patrol increase their response time because of the amount of time it takes to go over, go under, things like that.

Sure.
You have urban-to-urban contact, like El Paso and [Ciudad] Juarez. Juarez is, I believe, twice the size of El Paso, and they’re right up next to each other. [Ed note: Ciudad Juarez’s population is 1.3 million and El Paso’s is 684,000.] Then, in some places, I have Big Bend National Park. Santa Elana Canyon is a 6,000-foot cliff, then the Rio Grande River, and then another 6,000-foot cliff on the other side. Guess what? It’s already a physical barrier. Lake Amistad, which is a lake on both sides of the border, has dozens of miles on either side. A wall in a body of water has another name. It’s called a dam.

Then you have the people who have farms that go up against the Rio Grande because the Rio Grande is a source of water for agriculture and ranching. In some areas where there has been a proposal for a wall, in my district alone there’s the potential of ceding 1.1 million acres of land to Mexico. There’s a thing in Texas we care about called private property rights. I think in just Texas alone, it would impact almost 1,000 property holders.

To build this theoretical wall?
To get the property rights with eminent domain. It would impact 1,000 people. Outside of Texas, you have the federal government or the state government as some of the biggest landowners. But what is happening, when you understand the threat from the narcos — if you’re not following some of the Chapo hearings…