Reps. Dean Phillips and Pete Stauber saw wretched conditions at U.S.-Mexico border.
WASHINGTON, DC – The national immigration debate has turned the southern border into a popular destination for members of Congress, including several Minnesota lawmakers from both parties who report being shocked by what they saw.
“I’d seen the photos and read some accounts,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat. “I anticipated I’d see difficult conditions, but what I saw was almost indescribable. I couldn’t believe that, in my own country, that people were being kept in the ways that I saw.”
Phillips’ most recent trip to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas was on July 19, where he and a bipartisan group of House members inspected ports of entry, a Border Patrol station, a centralized processing center and the border itself. It was his second visit in a period of less than two months, following a conversation with Rep. Pete Stauber about his own visit in there in April.
View the complete August 2 article by Patrick Condon on The Star Tribune website here.