June 28, 2023 721 PM
TEXAS — Will Hurd, who served three terms as U.S. Representative for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District — which encompasses the Big Bend region — announced last week that he is running for president.
Hurd announced his entry into the Republican primary on Thursday morning during a CBS news segment, then posted an announcement video in which he enumerates the dangers he believes are threatening the nation and deploys a call to arms to oppose both President Joe Biden and “lawless, selfish” former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“At home, illegal immigration and fentanyl stream into our country,” Hurd says. “Inflation, still out of control. Crime and homelessness, growing in our cities and liberals do nothing.”
Hurd distinguished himself on the national stage during his tenure — from 2015 to 2021 — representing the vast borderland district as a relatively moderate Republican willing to break from his party at times, notably in matters of LGBTQ rights and immigration. However, he did vote along the party line in most cases, including when he twice voted in support of a 20-week abortion ban.
Hurd was a vocal critic of Donald Trump, and as a representative was intensely critical of Trump’s plan to build a border wall, calling it ineffective.
However, in a recent interview with Fox News during a visit to the northern border, Hurd said he would not be opposed to completing stretches of Trump’s border wall “where a physical barrier makes sense” — where there’s “urban-to-urban contact,” he said — while also emphasizing the deployment of “technology” along the border.
“Every mile of the border is different from every other mile,” said Hurd.
In the same interview, he called President Biden the “worst border security president” in U.S. history and took particular issue with the administration’s policy around asylum seekers, which Hurd characterized as “treating everybody as an asylum seeker.”
“Treating everybody as an asylum seeker is something that started under Donald Trump and something that Joe Biden continued, and Joe Biden just added fuel to that fire,” said Hurd. “And so doing that is something that we would stop on day one.”
Biden earlier this year imposed significant limitations on asylum seekers, mandating that asylum-seekers will be penalized unless they cross through a port of entry or demonstrated they were denied protection in a country they crossed through.
A representative for Hurd did not return multiple request for an interview by press time.
