Bipartisan Congressional Delegation Returns from Central America

Statement

U.S. Representative Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.) of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) traveled Friday through Sunday to Guatemala and Honduras on a bipartisan, bicameral congressional delegation to see firsthand the factors that incentivize migration from Central America to the U.S.

Among the delegation's many stops were border crossings and checkpoints in both countries and a vocational training facility and model police precinct station in Honduras.

Representative Ribble (WI-08) issued this statement following his return:

"The surge of adults and unaccompanied children trying to immigrate through our southern border is a crisis without an easy solution, and presents humanitarian issues on multiple layers as untold numbers of migrants become victims of human trafficking and suffer at the hands of brutal drug cartels in some of the hemisphere's poorest and most volatile countries," Ribble said. "We want to stem this tide of migration both by having strong border control and enforcement mechanisms, and by acting as a partner to address the root causes of this problem before it starts. As I visited border crossings, police checkpoints, shelters for sex trafficking victims, and spoke with officials in the region, I saw promising work being done, but it is clear that we still have a long way to go to truly address the immigration crisis at hand."

Source