Press Releases

El Paso, Texas – Congressman Josh Brecheen is attending Border Boot Camp with fellow House Homeland Security Committee Republicans to get a firsthand look at the crisis at our Southern Border.

“It has been eye-opening to get a firsthand look at the border crisis, where we even saw Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents catch individuals trying to smuggle narcotics into the United States,” said Congressman Josh Brecheen.

“Our open border is enriching drug cartels and human traffickers and is enabling deadly fentanyl to pour into our communities. Oklahomans understand the very real effects of our border crisis all too well. In 2022, more than 300 Oklahomans were killed by fentanyl, while that number was 47 just three years earlier in 2019. The crisis on our Southern border is getting worse and Congress must fulfill its Article IV, Section 4 constitutional duty to protect states from invasion before we lose our Republic,” Brecheen concluded.

Some startling statistics for the month of January:

• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 156,274 illegal crossings along the Southern Border last month. That’s the highest January total in more than 20 years.

• 1,400 pounds of fentanyl was seized at our southern border last month, making January the seventh month in a row with over a thousand pounds of fentanyl uncovered by Border Patrol agents.

• 15 suspected terrorists were apprehended at our southern border in January alone.

• Since President Biden has been in office, there have been nearly 4.7 million illegal crossings at the Southern border, that’s more than the population of the entire state of Oklahoma (3.98 million).