The Left’s growing anti-police rhetoric and efforts to defund law enforcement nationwide are having dire consequences.
As the Left continues to demonize policing, morale among officers is low, and others are leaving the force. A recent survey showed a 45% increase in officer retirements and a 20% increase in resignations over the last year alone.
Law enforcement officers I’ve spoken to across my district in Iowa have echoed this concern. They are struggling to retain and hire new officers they need to keep our communities safe.
And to no one’s surprise, crime is on the rise in cities that have defunded their police forces. It’s not just local police departments the Left wants to strip of resources. House Democrats on the Appropriations Committee are trying to slash funding for our immigration enforcement agencies amid the worst illegal immigration crisis in modern history.
The Democrats released their initial Homeland Security funding proposal for the next fiscal year last week. Under their bill, both U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would lose the resources they need to manage the illegal immigration surge and protect our country against threats stemming from our open border.
On my recent trip to the border, law enforcement told me they needed more resources and more boots on the ground to handle the current crisis conditions they are facing. Illegal border crossings continue to surge at record levels. Our officers don’t have the manpower or tools necessary to combat the cartels, smugglers, and human traffickers using sophisticated techniques to push dangerous drugs and people across our border every day — and this bill inexplicably provides no funding for additional Border Patrol agents to counter this surge.
As the border crisis worsens, Democrats are ignoring law enforcement’s cries for help, advocating to cut CBP’s budget by a billion dollars and to cut ICE’s budget on top of that.
Even worse, they gut Enforcement and Removal Operations under ICE, slashing its budget by more than $300 million. ERO deportation officers specifically work to track down and deport wanted criminals inside our country. These officers are dedicated to targeting those who pose grave public safety threats, including convicted criminals, gang members, and fugitives who have repeatedly violated our immigration laws.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol has recently apprehended multiple people on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist trying to cross the border — and those are just the dangerous criminals our agents have been able to catch. We have no idea who has escaped detection and successfully entered our country.
Illegal immigration crossings are surging at record levels, deadly drugs are pouring across the border in droves, and crime is spiking in border communities and across the country. It is clearly the wrong time to cut off resources for U.S. immigration enforcement agencies. As a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, I am fighting this reckless proposal at every turn.
As this legislation moves forward, I will tell my Democrat colleagues what Border Patrol agents told me firsthand: They need more resources to keep Americans safe, not fewer resources.
Our law enforcement officers across the country and at the border are being stripped of the resources they need to keep Americans safe. I will always defend, never defund, law enforcement officers in Iowa and at our southern border.
Ashley Hinson represents Iowa’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and serves on the House Appropriations Committee and House Budget Committee.
