AP Photo Robert Ardovino, a partner in a decades-old family restaurant business, surveys his property on the U.S. border with Mexico in Sunland Park, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. Ardovino has a close-up view of border enforcement efforts and bristles at politicians talking from afar about an "open border." The politics of immigration look different from communities on the Southwest border that are voting in hotly contested congressional races.

The presidential election could come down to the result of the vote in Pennsylvania.

As a result, millions and millions of dollars in ads come to voters here via the mail, our phones, television and sites like YouTube.

Many of those ads focus on what Republicans are clearly trying to make a wedge issue in the campaign – immigration.

When the issue came up in the presidential debate, the discussion centered around whether Haitian migrants in Springfield, Oh. (who are here legally) are eating neighborhood dogs and cats.

“It shows you should always make sure you fact check,” Congressman Glenn Thompson told the Times Observer. “I don’t know what the truth is there.”

He called President Trump’s use of that story a “missed opportunity” to focus on the broader issue.

And what solutions would Thompson like to see on the broader issue of immigration?

“I don’t think it takes a real creative imagination to know what we need,” Thompson said, calling for a return to President Trump’s policies.

He cited Trump’s executive order actions that decreased the number of people coming across the southern border.

“Congress didn’t provide any help on this,” he said. “THe border wall was working…. We know what works, the remain in Mexico policy.”

That was a policy, Thompson said, where people seeking amnesty had to remain in Mexico while their case was adjudicated.

“That was done away with,” he said.

Thompson alleged that the Biden administration sent the message “to the rest of the world” that “whether intentional or not, ‘(we have) open borders. You can just walk into the United States. We have no rules or nor low.'”

He said that Trump’s actions “really sent a message (that) we’re a nation that follows the rule of law. It sent a message to folks ‘Don’t bother coming. We want to welcome you into our nation. There’s a right way and a wrong way.'”

Thompson acknowledged that the “right way is so bureaucratic.” He cited a case his office worked with where it took 16 years to get a greencard, explaining that he thinks some people will pass away before they get final permission.

“We really just need to go back to a lot of the policies” under Trump, he reiterated.

What should be done in the cases where people are already here?

Trump has proposed mass deportations.

Thompson said that starts with those who have entered illegally that have criminal records or gang membership.

“I think for the good of the country, we should do a first out, first in,” Thompson said. Those who voluntary register and return to their country of origin show “a willingness to comply. You get to be in line to come back the proper way.

“Unless you do that, (we’re) going to continue to see this surge on our border, maybe forever,” he said. “The purpose of the wall was not to seal off people coming in (but) to funnel them to points of entry so we can determine who you are and what your intention is.”

That approach, he said, would “greatly reduce” human trafficking and drugs flowing into the country “by getting them to those ports of entry.”

“The number of people we’ve lost in our communities because of human trafficking (and death by fentanyl,” he said, “we are a border state. All of us are a border state.”