From border issues to gun debates, Texas often finds itself embroiled in controversial debates. The Washington Examiner spoke with one of Texas’s most well-known politicians, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, about the border crisis, the state’s COVID-19 reopening, and other issues. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Washington Examiner: You recently went to the border to observe the current crisis. What’s happening there, and what do you think of President Biden’s response?
Crenshaw: Well, the numbers don’t lie. We are well on our way to, and over, 100,000 illegal crossings and apprehensions every month. It’s massive. It’s surpassing the crisis we had two years ago when I first got into Congress. It’s happening for the same reasons. The Trump administration worked hard to reverse that crisis. They utilized all tools they had at their disposal. Some of that is building infrastructure, funding border patrol, and investing in technology. But you do all that, and people will walk across and turn themselves in. The security aspect is to get people trying to get away. But what about the people trying to get in? There are stories of people who will take an Uber to get in. Our system is so flawed that turning yourself into border patrol is part of the journey because that’s how you get your healthcare, food, and ticket where you want to go. Your ticket is also a child.
The system works OK if you’re a single adult, but if you have a child with you, our system has proven itself unequipped to deal with that. The way the Trump administration dealt with that is to say, “OK, you’re claiming asylum.” Asylum is a hefty legal standard. Only about 10% of applicants end up being granted legal asylum because you have to be under persecution. Everyone would acknowledge, if they’re being honest, the vast majority of people coming across are not being persecuted, they’re simply doing a cost-benefit analysis of whether or not they’re better off coming to the U.S. In fact, I’m better off sending my child alone across the border into the U.S. than the alternative.
The Trump administration said that if people wanted to claim asylum, they had to remain in their country while the U.S. adjudicated their claim. This had a massive effect. It gave people a huge disincentive to just illegally cross the border. When Biden reversed Trump’s policies, it overnight created this crisis. Overnight. On top of that, Biden said he would pause deportations. On top of that, he said he would give everyone essentially blanket amnesty, we’re voting on that bill [on Friday]. So all of these things combined have created massive incentive to come across illegally.
Washington Examiner: What are Republicans planning on doing in response?
Crenshaw: We have to get the American people to care. We’re exposing the truth. We’re helping people understand the facts: Call your representative and demand answers. That’s our avenue right now. We’re creating a documentary on this from my trip down there. It’s hard to hide from this.
Washington Examiner: What about the kids in cages? They’re still there, but I’ve noticed that the language has disappeared from much of the media.
Crenshaw: Well, now we have kids in soft-sided structures. Look, it was always an absurd accusation. Because the question was always, “Well, what would you prefer? Do you want to fund hotel rooms for everybody? Do you want walls instead of cages so there’s no airflow, so you can’t see if somebody is being abused or hurt?”
We have processing facilities for a reason, and there’s a reason that Biden and Obama built them the way that they did. When you’re dealing with hundreds of people at a time, you need some kind of facility to do that. It’s hard to know what a better alternative would be. The question is always, “Compared to what?” Do you immediately give them a bus ticket to somewhere? That’s what I would ask, and they don’t have an answer because that’s not the point. The point is to demagogue.
Washington Examiner: Texas was one of the first states to reopen fully and remove mask mandates. You’ve been really opinionated about lockdowns. What are your thoughts on that?
Crenshaw: Nobody has been able to find a correlation between these COVID trends and lockdowns or shelter-in-place orders. That’s a pretty significant finding. I anticipated that all along. Now we have all the data to prove it, so, it’s shocking that we’re even still talking about lockdowns and business closures as a reasonable tool to fight a pandemic that is global in nature and that has literally never in history been stopped by such a thing. I just read a funny story that California is going to open up roller coasters, but they’re going to require people to be silent [while riding] laughs. There are so many instances where even private businesses are taking measures more to virtue signal than anything else.
I’ve got a bill on lockdowns: It doesn’t impose on state’s rights. We’re still constitutional conservatives which limits our ability to impose our will, that’s the point. [The bill] says if you’re going to receive money for state and local bailouts —government to government money just to be clear, it has nothing to do with unemployment benefits or [personal protective equipment] funding — federal money that goes to state governments, for you to receive that money, you have to have a reopening plan. That’s it. Simple. I don’t see why that wouldn’t be amenable to Democrats. It also would prevent the president from imposing a lockdown order.
Washington Examiner: So you supported [Texas] Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening and removing the mask mandate?
Crenshaw: I definitely did. I would have supported it months ago. I was never a fan of the mask mandate. Private businesses should continue to ask people to wear masks if they want to, but that’s always how it should have been. The big problem I have with lockdowns and mandates is that they’re unconstitutional in the sense that I’m not aware of a single instance where it was voted on via the democratic process. They’ve all been via governor or mayoral edicts. That’s problematic. It’s not the nature of our republic. There has to be a democratic process.
Washington Examiner: Speaking of a lack of democratic process, describe your thoughts on the latest stimulus bill, which outlines a little bit of relief and a lot of “pork” for other states.
Crenshaw: What the people need to know about it is a lot of this money is going into accounts that are already filled with hundreds of billions of dollars. When [Democrats] were promoting this bill, they were pretending like we hadn’t passed $4 trillion already. They’re like, “We made this mistake in 2008, we didn’t do enough.” There’s some truth to that argument. I might look back and agree, but we already did $4 trillion worth, and it was pretty well-targeted and bipartisan.
This time, in order to give Biden a win, Democrats constructed an extremely partisan, useless bill. Half of it isn’t even spent until 2022 or later. $350 billion goes to states and municipalities that didn’t manage their budgets well. California had a surplus and now they got another $40 billion. So, it’s unbelievably bad spending. I’m against the cash payments too. I get that people like getting free money, imagine that? But well over 100 million [people] are getting a $1400 stimulus check, and they’ve never lost their jobs. Federal workers and active-duty military getting stimulus checks. I have lots of active-duty military friends, and they’re like, “This is ridiculous.” I don’t like it, and I didn’t like it when so many conservatives were jumping on board in December when Donald Trump was supporting this.
Washington Examiner: You just turned 37. Happy late birthday! What’s your favorite birthday present that you got as a kid or even as an adult:
Crenshaw: Good question laughs. You know, me and my wife [Tara] always take trips for my birthday. That’s what we do. We don’t really do presents. My favorite trip to take is a ski trip. I’ve been skiing since I was a little kid. Me and my brother try to take trips, and I’ve gotten my wife into skiing, I’ve never skied outside the U.S., but that’s the next goal. We like to go to Colorado, Utah, Sun Valley, but I’ve never been to Whistler [Whistler Blackcomb, a ski resort in British Columbia, Canada]. That’s my next goal.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
