Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., has challenged President Donald Trump to produce a plan to strengthen border security on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Washington Examiner reports.
“I do not believe our Southwest border’s secure. So I don’t share the view, when people say: ‘Well, we don’t need to do anything, the border’s secure.’ The border’s not secure. But we need to be smart about how we do border security,” Heitkamp told the Examiner in an interview Thursday. “We’re waiting for a southern border strategy.”
The senator said she has yet to see a plan from the White House that lays out how to improve interior enforcement of immigration policy or to build a wall on the southern border that works.
Heitkamp, who is running for reelection in a state that Trump handily won in 2016, has split from the more liberal members of her party by defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“What I will say on abolishing ICE: I just find that — I’m a former attorney general. I will admit a bias for law enforcement,” she said. “To criticize anyone in law enforcement for doing what they’re doing — doing their job as they’ve been told to do their job? That just doesn’t sit will with me.”
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