A country can no more survive without borders than a person can live without skin. When borders break down, our personal safety suffers along with our national integrity.

On May 11th, the House of Representatives adopted legislation to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis along our southern border. The Secure the Border Act included policies to disrupt the flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States and combat a system that – as it currently operates – incentivizes the trafficking and exploitation of children. What did our Representative, Joe Courtney, do when given the opportunity to take meaningful action to address this crisis? He voted NO, instead choosing to endorse a status quo that impacts communities not just at the border, but around the country.

All of us have watched coverage on the nightly news or read articles about the ongoing crisis at our border. Over the last two and a half years, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have recorded more than five million illegal crossings along the U.S./Mexico border.

As CBP works to manage wave after wave of migrant crossings, they also work tirelessly to stay ahead of the cartels, seizing more than 14,000 pounds of fentanyl since January 2021.

Fentanyl is just one of many illicit substances routed into our country through Mexico. As so many parents across our state know, even a fraction of an ounce of this poison is deadly. According to state data regarding fatal drug overdoses, the average percentage of fentanyl or fentanyl-related deaths in Connecticut was 85% in 2022, up from 82% in 2019.

Despite the Second Congressional District being home to the county with the highest number of overdose deaths in the state for the last four consecutive years, Representative Courtney voted against legislation designed to better resource our CBP agents and keep the cartels from trafficking these deadly drugs into our communities.

Representative Courtney’s vote, however, was not just a vote to allow more substances like fentanyl into our communities. It was a vote to support the continuation of a humanitarian crisis of truly tragic proportions. Even the New York Times has given extensive coverage to the more than 250,000 unaccompanied children trafficked across our southern border over the last two and a half years, children who are often abused and sent into lives of illegal labor and other unthinkable environments.

During the Trump Administration, Representative Courtney was active in his condemnation of the humanitarian crisis at the border. In 2019 he issued a press release lambasting the “chaos of the Trump Administration's immigration policy on asylum seekers” and linking those policies to

the death of 10 migrants who tragically died in CBP custody. This was one of many press releases and statements issued against efforts to secure our southern border.

Since President Biden took office, however, Representative Courtney has said next to nothing about the crisis at the border which, by every single measure and metric, has grown worse since January 2021.

He has issued no press releases expressing concern for the fifty-one migrants who died in CBP custody under President Biden’s watch in FY2021, let alone any migrant since, including the 8-year-old girl or the 17-year-old unaccompanied boy who died in custody just weeks ago. He passed no substantive reforms to our immigration system – unlike the current Congress – for migrants and asylum seekers despite his party having total control of the Congress and the Presidency from January 2021 through December 2022. And even though he pays lip service to “bipartisan work”, when it comes to addressing issues like fentanyl, residents of the Second District must not forget that their Representative voted against legislation to stop the flow of these substances from coming to Connecticut when he had the chance.

We must achieve border integrity to curb the flow of drugs, guns and trafficked humans, and we can only achieve this if we cast off the false premise that to do so would be callous disregard for the plight of migrants.

When it comes to actually addressing the humanitarian crisis at our southern border and keeping our communities safe, Representative Courtney’s hypocrisy is on full display.

Mike France is a Republican candidate for the 2nd Congressional District.