The Lukeville Port of Entry is set to reopen Thursday a month after it closed.
The reopening comes as a record surge of migrants continues to cross along the southern border.
Juan Ciscomani of Arizona’s sixth congressional district spoke with KGUN9 before his tour of the border Wednesday.
He and 65 other congress members toured the Del Rio Sector of US Customs and Border Protection in Eagle Pass, Texas.
“If there are no consequences this is only going to continue to get worse,” said Ciscomani.
CBP in the Del Rio Sector shared with Ciscomani in a message for congress, “he said I’ll never decline any resources that you guys want to send me, but if we don’t change the polices, nothing is going to change.”
The Del Rio Sector is seeing record numbers of migrants, but the Tucson Sector still leads the nation with 80,000 encounters in December alone.
Ciscomani is pleased he and other members of the Arizona delegation put the pressure on CBP to reopen the Lukeville port of entry. Still, he pointed out that closing the port did nothing to slow the number of migrants crossing.
“You know what they did, hurt businesses. They hurt the trade, the commerce, the tourism in the season where most businesses budget their revenue to have 30, 40 percent of their revenue come in in the month of December, because of tourism and so on,” said Ciscomani.
“These businesses were hurt, and so was the tourism, and so was the trade and commerce. So, there were no winners in this.”
When asked about the role congress can play in passing new immigration laws, Ciscomani said the bill HR2 passed through the house and is waiting on the senate. He added there are also policies already in place that the Biden administration refused to enforce.