Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) led a group of bipartisan politicians on Thursday in calling for stronger action on illegal immigration at the United States’s southern border.
Polis, alongside Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, expressed frustration at the lack of federal and congressional teamwork when it comes to the border crisis.
The men claimed that the border crisis should be a topic that is “easy to solve” since both parties want a lot of the same things, but lawmakers on both sides are not listening to each other.
“To solve immigration, we need to have real border security and lock down the border,” Polis said during an event at American University, according to the Hill. “And then we need to expedite all this stuff that takes years and the processes around it.”
The Democratic governor said when Congress does not agree and pass meaningful bipartisan legislation, the responsibility falls on the states, which are ill-equipped to handle the major influx of illegal immigrants spurred by the federal government’s policies.
“So obviously, we have to deal with the issue of the states, which, I have to say, it’s very frustrating because we don’t control our own borders,” Polis said. “We don’t know who’s in our states. And that’s not what states are set up to do.”
Cox and Hogan agreed that both parties needed to come together and pass what they can agree on.
“Almost all Republicans and almost all Democrats actually agree on this one,” Cox said. “Democrats believe we should secure the border. Republicans agree that we need to fix legal immigration, and vice versa, obviously.”
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The criticism comes after the Senate failed to pass a long-awaited border security bill by slim margins despite it taking months to negotiate.
The legislation would have made changes to the asylum process, granted the president expulsion authority, and increased the number of border patrol agents and asylum officers.