Westerman travels for facts
Trip enlightening about immigration, forests, he says
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., has gone on fact-finding trips this summer, gathering information about topics ranging from immigration to agriculture.
Last month, the lawmaker from Hot Springs traveled with some of his colleagues to southern Texas and was briefed on the recent wave of border crossings there.
“We caught a flight down to McAllen and spent some time down on the Rio Grande with the border patrol,” he said.
Westerman, the top-ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, said a lot of the land is federally owned and heavily traveled.
“We wanted to go out and look, and see if these federal lands are being maintained as well as other federal lands and see the impact of a large influx of migrants on the land.”
“We did see some damage. We saw some trampling and some new trails that had been essentially beat out by a lot of people walking through the area. And these trails went right to the the bank of the Rio Grande,” he said.
There was “quite a bit of trash” he said, mentioning that he had found a cellphone, still more than halfway charged, that had been dropped or abandoned.
In June, more than 188,000 people were detained after attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico.
Customs and Border Protection officials encountered more than 212,000 people along the border in July.
“I don’t know what they’re being told, but the message is out that the border’s wide open,” Westerman said.
Given the numbers, border control officials are swamped, he said.
“They’ve become paper pushers. They’re just filling out paperwork, processing these people, and they’re not out patrolling the border and trying to stop the drugs and the other nefarious activities
that are happening on the border,” he said.
The weary people who cross are typically paying thousands of dollars to do so, and they are frequently preyed upon, by coyotes or criminals, as they travel north, he said.
“There’s no telling what kind of trauma these people have lived through,” Westerman said.
Stemming the flow of immigrants will be challenging.
“It’s got to be a diplomatic approach,” he said.
While Texas deals with record border detentions, other areas are battling wildfires, droughts and water shortages among other challenges.
Earlier this month, Westerman and other lawmakers also journeyed west, visiting Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, roughly 40 miles northeast of Portland, Ore., also pausing to meet with county commissioners in the state.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ore., who represents the area and the forests surrounding it, welcomed a visit by Westerman, the only member of Congress with a graduate degree in forestry.
Afterward, Bentz portrayed the visit as helpful.
“In meeting with local leaders from across Oregon, we discussed the importance of managing our forests, the ongoing catastrophic drought, and massive wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of land this year alone,” he said in a written statement.
The visit gave Westerman a chance to discuss his Trillion Trees Act, which would increase the planting of seedlings and overhaul the nation’s forest management policies.
Western states have faced massive wildfires in recent years, and Westerman said he expects this year’s fire season to be “horrific” as well.
Much of Oregon already faces extreme or severe drought conditions and the state endured record-breaking heat in June, with Portland reaching 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
Things are hot and dry in much of California as well, another of Westerman’s stops.
While there, he visited Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River and spent time at a watermelon farm in the San Joaquin Valley. The agriculture industry is bracing for severe water shortages in some areas.
In Alaska, Westerman met with “indigenous leaders, fishermen and representatives from our energy and forestry sectors,” according to a written statement by the state’s sole U.S. representative, Republican Don Young.