Sen. John Cornyn thinks the White House will be on board with a bill he issued last week to beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico border. But that hasn’t stopped the majority whip from distancing himself from President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.
Cornyn’s office put out a press release Monday morning quoting several editorials and organizations that favorably compared his border package, a layered strategy including walls, fencing, technology, and increased border patrol presence, to the president’s big, beautiful wall.
“Cornyn’s plan brings a more reasoned alternative to Trump’s one-size-fits-all, build a border wall approach,” Juan Castillo of the Austin American-Statesman is quoted as saying.
The release also quotes an editorial from the McAllen Monitor titled “Senate must slow down the border wall,” which decries the damage a wall would do to the local economy and presents Cornyn’s package as a desirable alternative. McAllen, located in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state, is Texas’s fifth most populated metropolitan area.“Cornyn has a respected understanding of our Valley and the economics of our region, which relies on cross-border trade and eco-tourism,” the editorial reads.
Cornyn has spoken against a coast-to-coast border wall before. Back in February, he said that a wall “makes absolutely no sense” for parts of the border
