(ConservativeSense.com) – Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is one of many Republican lawmakers calling on President Joe Biden to split up the emergency supplemental package into separate policies, arguing that the unified funding request is “designed” to make the southern border crisis even worse.
Last Friday morning, the White House sent a letter to Congress requesting an aid package that would lump together funds for Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, and the US-Mexico border into a single relief package from the US.
The requested amount is a staggering $105 billion, $61.4 billion of which would go to Ukraine; $14.3 billion to Israel, including $10.6 billion for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); $13.6 billion toward border security; and $7.4 billion to security assistance in the Indo-Pacific region. There’s also an additional $9 billion to be set aside for humanitarian aid in Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine.
Cruz appeared on Fox News last Friday and said that including the funding for the border in the package “is all designed” to speed up the processing of illegal immigrants. “In other words,” Cruz said, the package is “not designed to stop” the border crisis but “to make it worse.”
The aid request will pay for 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents to halt the smuggling of fentanyl and 1,600 extra asylum officers to quicken the processing of immigrants seeking asylum. Funds will also be allocated to advanced detection technology for the southwest border and for investigating cartels who are trafficking fentanyl into the US. Cruz said only policy changes will solve the border problem, not throwing more money at it.
Cruz also called for ending “catch and release” policies as well as reinstating Title 42, which ended in May and was put in place during the end of former President Donald Trump’s term in 2020 in response to the pandemic, allowing the government to expel migrants much quicker back over the border into Mexico.
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