Thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of Senate Bill 2424, which would create a state misdemeanor or, depending on the context, a felony for those who illegally enter Texas via an international border. My name is Joshua Treviño, and I am the Chief of Intelligence and Research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research institution in Austin, Texas. In my role, much of my work focuses on the violence in Mexico, and the reclamation of Texas’s sovereignty under the Constitution.
Texas Takes Aim at Birth Tourism Fraud
In Mission, Texas, a south Texas border town, local residents noticed a new billboard advertising “Birth Packages in South Texas,” with maternity tourism services listed at more than $5,000. The advertisement directed customers to the website HaveMyBabyInTexas.com, which has since been taken down. It wasn’t just an advertisement for medical services, but rather an advertisement...