Border turnaround takes center stage in GOP midterm strategy

HIDALGO, Texas — National Border Patrol Council President Paul Perez said Friday that the resources provided to border officials through the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act have uncuffed border patrol agents to do their jobs.

It is a measure of success that Republicans are counting on voters to reward them for in the November midterm elections.

That’s why Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, led a group of fellow GOP lawmakers and candidates to the Texas-Mexico border Friday to highlight the peace and quiet that now dominates the boundary.

“A year ago, at this time, President Trump hadn’t even been sworn in yet. We were still suffering. The American people were under the Biden open border policies,” Mr. Thune said.

However, he said it would take vigilant Republican leadership to keep the border closed.

“One of the things that we think is really important to maintaining the progress that’s been made here at the southern border is for us to protect and preserve and preserve our majority in the United States Senate, hopefully even to expand upon it, but also to make sure that we maintain that majority in the House of Representatives,” Mr. Thune said.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said his state was reimbursed roughly $11 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for border enforcement, compared to nothing under President Biden.

The Border Patrol Council’s Mr. Perez said that under Mr. Trump and a Republican-run Congress, border agents have the funding they need to protect the U.S. “like it’s never been protected before.”

“From day one, President Trump took the handcuffs off the Border Patrol agents and allowed them to do their jobs,” Mr. Perez said.

Mr. Perez said that, unlike his experience during the Biden years, Republicans and the White House have listened to the council, a labor union representing 18,000 Border Patrol agents.

“The chaos, the destruction under the Biden administration, millions of people crossed the border illegally. They were unvetted, and they were released into this country,” he said. “The Biden administration not only encouraged it, they facilitated it.”

While the senators hailed the remarkable success after one year, they said the U.S. still faces the daunting task of cleaning up from the previous administration’s open border policy.

The Washington Times asked Mr. Thune if Republicans would introduce legislation to punish states that refuse to cooperate with or impede immigration enforcement.

“I think it’s always a real possibility if you’ve got local officials who are circumventing or flouting federal law,” he said. “There are ways, obviously, to the power of the purse and resources that every state benefits enormously from with federal funding coming into their state, I’m sure there are things you could look at.”

Democratic officials in states such as Minnesota, New York and California have pushed back on the Trump administration when it sent federal immigration officers into their states.

Mr. Thune said the GOP is considering legislation to combat fraud within the aid agencies in many of these states.

“You could see potentially legislation to address and to make sure that people are benefiting from federal programs,” he said. “And there have been a lot of conversations around biometric testing or confirming IDs in some way of ensuring that these programs … aren’t being gamed and abused by individuals or groups or states.”