Senator Jerry Moran recently joined others in Congress supporting passage of the Laken Riley Act.
The legislation has already passed in the House of Representatives. The bill is intended to ensure states have standing to bring civil actions against federal officials who violate or refuse to enforce immigration law.
“We want to try to make certain that if someone gets through our border, which is really common now, that the crime that might be occurring is something that we try to eliminate and that’s what this bill is about. The real emphasis ought to be on stopping people who are not legally entitled to be in the United States from coming here,” Moran said Friday during a visit to KMAN’s Morning News.
Moran says the U.S. has a set of policies and an attitude in place which encourages people to enter illegally, because after crossing the border, they claim amnesty.
“Our border security, it’s an economic — it’s a national safety and security issue, it’s an individual safety and security (issue) and drugs, fentanyl in particular are eating away at our country. That remains at the top of the list, but part of what needs to happen is Congress returning to normal in which there’s enough cooperation that we can get the basics done,” he said.
Moran joined others including Sen. Roger Marshall, Sen. Katie Britt, of Alabama and Sen. Ted Budd, of North Carolina in supporting the bill.
Moran says his other top priority is the Afghan Adjustment Act. Afghan men and women worked to help the United States military and the State Department. Most were either left behind or were allowed in the United States on a very short-term basis, after American troops were withdrawn. Moran’s office has received more than a thousand emails and phone calls from Kansans who want the Afghan men and women who helped them protected.
Moran, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee also commented Friday on the annual appropriations bill that secured funding for Fort Riley infrastructure. That includes $105 million for a new aircraft maintenance hangar.
“Now we’re working to bring the capabilities of the fort’s mission to have a better capability of meeting that mission,” he said.
Also included in that is $1.1 million for planning and designing improvements to the Bob Dole Railyard.
“I want to make sure the Pentagon understands that we are not in the middle of no place because I think our location suggests that we would be slow to deploy. We’re actually the award-winning post in speed of deployment because of Forbes Field and Union Pacific and the railroad tracks. All these things create a circumstance in which Fort Riley is a better installation than sometimes it’s known by people who are making decisions,” he said.
The appropriations bill also includes $8.7 million for construction of an infantry platoon battle course and $1.6 million for planning and designing a new air traffic control tower at Fort Riley.
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