On October 2, Representative for Texas Congressional District 23 and Class of 1999, Will Hurd spoke at the Mosbacher Institute’s Conversations in Public Policy series at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center, in a dialogue titled “Immigration Policy Challenges Facing Congress”.
Hurd spoke on the influx of immigrants migrating to the United States in recent years. However,what has changed is that these immigrants are coming from the Northern Triangle, which is made up of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Hurd said that in order to help these regions, the United States needs to continue providing aid to help sponsor programs in these areas that are working to help citizens not fall victim to violence.
“We have these programs that are actually working and addressing good causes we just need to magnify them,” Hurd said. “Cutting off aid to these countries is the actual backwards thing, we should be increasing aid in order to multiply the programs already existing.”
Hurd brought up the topic of children being detained in detention facilities along the border, and said that those facilities are not equipped to properly hold and care for all the children being held by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Part of it was the funding issue, and since all my colleagues want to argue about how bad these children are, yeah they are, but you gotta make sure that we’re funding the rest of this stuff for this open ended process to work,” Hurd said.
Hurd said he believes that current DACA recipients should be able to receive their U.S. citizenship and even though 76 percent of other Republicans agree to streamline the process, it has not been possible, due to political leverage.
“They are kids that are passing background checks, they’re going to school, they’re working hard, they’re contributing to society,” Hurd said. “They’re already Americans, lets streamline that.”
Hurd also said that he does not support President Trump’s idea for building a wall around the U.S. border.
“Building a wall from sea to shining sea will be the most expensive and least effective way to do border security,” Hurd said. “We need more people in border patrol, there’s a retention problem within the border patrol and so we should be addressing that.”
Will Hurd has announced that he is stepping down from Congress and is considering running for president for the 2024 election. Hurd said that he enjoyed coming back to Texas A&M to speak to fellow Aggies.
“Aggies don’t lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do,” Hurd said. “ If more people were like that in Washington D.C., we’d be better off.”