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House Republicans have seemingly sat by in silence as the president holds hundreds of thousands of federal workers hostage during the government shutdown that he has chosen not to end. But now, one Congressional voice has risen above the partisan fray to show that not all common sense has been lost among the GOP. Just most of it.

As if that wasn’t surprising enough, the Congressman happens to be Black.

Texas Rep. Will Hurd, the only Black Republican in Congress, on Friday suggested in two different ways that a border wall wouldn’t do much to deter illegal immigration and poked a hole in the president’s shaky assertion that there was an immigration crisis.

“Building a wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security,” Hurd said on “CBS This Morning. “We should be using technology. DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has new programs they’re trying to implement but guess what? You can’t implement them because the government is shut down. … Let’s talk about the Secure Fence Act that everybody passed, let’s double down on technology along the border.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, Hurd doubled down on his opinion in a Rolling Stone interview that was published on Friday. Hurd called the so-called immigration crisis at the border “a myth.” He continued: “That’s why we’ll continue to talk about how we solve this problem, operate within the Secure Fence Act, double down on our ports of entry, because that’s where most of the illegal drugs come in, that’s where most people are surrendering. We’ll use technology and address root causes in Mexico with a Marshall Plan for Central America. You do those things, put that together, it’s a big package, but it’s also what is needed in order to make sure our country is safe.”

Hurd’s words came at the end of a week where the “largest single group of asylum seekers ever to cross into the U.S. tunneled beneath the border wall near San Luis, Arizona, on Monday, voluntarily turning themselves into Customs and Border Protection,” ABC News reported.

That report all but validated the opinions of Hurd as well as the Democratic leadership in Congress and the Senate, which have maintained that building a wall would not deter people from trying to cross into the country illegally.

People may remember how more than a month ago the president boasted he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security” if Congress didn’t allocate billions of dollars to fund the construction of a wall along the nation’s southern border with Mexico that is based on Trump’s racist and xenophobic pretenses. (Never mind the fact that Trump has insisted for years that Mexico would pay for the wall.)

SEE ALSO:

Border Wall Funding: Trump Memes Mock Shutdown

Trump Says ‘I Never Meant Mexico Would Write A Check’ For The Wall

In Oval Office Speech, Trump Falsely Cites Black People To Justify His Border Wall
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