A top Texas Republican doesn’t want President Trump to spend taxpayer dollars building a wall along the southern border with Mexico, instead preferring stricter enforcement of current law.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said on CNN Wednesday that replacing fences currently blocking the border or building a wall in the desert isn’t the best use of American resources.
“I do not believe we need a wall in the middle of nowhere,” Sessions said.
He added, “What we need is operational control of the border.”
Trump hinted on Twitter Tuesday night that he will announce an executive order on Wednesday to start building portions of his southern border wall. A law passed in the middle part of the last decade gives the president authority to start building hundreds of miles of border wall, but former presidents have not used that authority.
Sessions said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly understands that and will address border security. He said he’s met with Kelly on a number of occasions and said he is knowledgeable about what needs to be done on the Mexican border.
Sessions said it’s important for criminal illegal immigrants coming into the country to be sent back to their home country and to end President Obama’s practices of catch and release or doing anything to encourage undocumented people from coming into the country.
“We’re going to follow the law,” he said. “We’re going to stop the illegal incursions across the border and we’re going to protect people.”
Sessions also demurred when asked if he believed Trump’s claim that millions of “illegals” voted in November’s election, costing him the popular vote.
He said he wants to hear Trump make his case about the alleged voter fraud, but doesn’t believe there is evidence to back up Trump’s claim.
“I haven’t looked at it, but it does not seem like a stand or a position that I would take,” he said, adding, “It does not seem plausible to me.”
Sessions added, “On the scale you’re talking about, perhaps in the hundreds. Not in the millions.”
