What I learned training with Border Patrol

I trained with Border Patrol around Yuma, Arizona, ahead of getting deployed to our pointless forever war in Iraq. We all knew then that our border was a mess. The rest of the country knew it too.

LUCAS KUNCE MAR 5

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In 2009, I saw firsthand how our border and immigration policies work well for corporate elites and showboat politicians, and not any of the rest of us. Back then, while Josh Hawley was working at DC’s oldest elite law and lobbying firm, I was training with Border Patrol agents around Yuma, Arizona, ahead of getting deployed to our pointless forever war in Iraq. We all knew then that our border was a mess. The rest of the country knew it too.

Since then, hundreds of politicians like Hawley have centered campaigns on it. Year in and year out, leaders in Congress bicker and negotiate over it. Turn on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN at any point in the last decade and a half, and you’ll see politicians claim they’re going to do everything they can to get it done. Campaigns have raised and spent millions of dollars promising to fix it.

Fifteen years later, they haven’t changed a bit. The border is even more of a mess. And politicians like Josh Hawley have torpedoed any action to secure our border explicitly for the sake of campaigning.

Hawley is just like the rest of them in Washington. If he fixed the border, then he’d lose one of his favorite campaign props. Hawley (rather famously) would much rather be seen fighting than actually fight to get something done. That’d require putting in real work to get something done, and corporate law didn’t prepare him for that. After all, when he worked there, Hawley’s old firm (Hogan Lovells, previously Hogan & Hartson) represented anti-union Japanese car companies, Swiss Banks, and dozens more multinational corporations who are profiting just fine off our broken immigration system as it is.

When the bi-partisan deal emerged in the Senate this year, it wasn’t perfect. But it provided critical investments and rule changes that would help us further secure the border. That’s why the deal was endorsed by the union for Border Patrol officers, the National Border Patrol Council.

It took a stab at limiting the record influx of people pooling on our side of the border —  but it didn’t address the fact that economic migrants keep erroneously seeking asylum, even as a majority of asylum applications are already being rejected. The deal’s expedited work visas represented a hallmark problem of our existing system, with visa availability determined seemingly arbitrarily rather than being set by labor needs or the priorities of American workers. It set a threshold at which asylum entry gets largely restricted automatically when our border is overwhelmed (as it is now), at least somewhat removing our weaker politicians from the equation — but we needed more of that in the deal. All things that could have been made better, while still providing more of what we needed to secure our border.

But sadly, making this deal better wasn’t even possible. Politicians struck once again.

Some (like Hawley) opposed this deal before they even knew what was in it, acting like the party of Koch-brother-backed Immigration Reform is suddenly going to fix the border after this next election. But history tells us they’re not telling the truth — when it comes to the border, it hasn’t mattered who controls Congress or the White House. Monthly migrant encounters doubled between 2021 and 2022, a huge jump under a Democratic administration. But they also doubled between 2018 and 2019, a huge jump under a Republican administration. And we’ve seen wave after wave going back decades.

If I learned anything as a Marine in Yuma in 2009 or since then, it’s that our politicians are full of it. We can’t trust them to fix the border or our broken immigration system. And we sure as hell can’t trust a guy like Josh Hawley, who kicked off his career at China’s top lobbying firm.

That’s why, in the U.S. Senate, I’ll fight for reform that removes politicians from the equation. If Congress can put bankers, of all people, in charge of monetary policy, they sure as hell can put workers at the head of the table on immigration policy. I’ll file legislation that gives working people a leading voice in determining who we need to bring into this country and how we do it, through a democratic body made up of our country’s most effective advocates for all workers: Organized labor.

I’ve said this from day 1 — I’m running for U.S. Senate to take power back for working people in Missouri. It’s time they called the shots on what happens in our country.

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Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.