EXCLUSIVE –One-time clandestine agent and former Republican congressman turned GOP presidential candidate Will Hurd is heading to the nation’s northern border with Canada on Tuesday, Fox News has learned.
And Hurd, who represented a congressional district in Texas that stretched for hundreds of miles along the southern border with Mexico, took aim at President Biden and former President Donald Trump in a Fox Digital interview on the eve of his Tuesday border tour in the northern tip of New Hampshire.
"Joe Biden is and will be the worst border security president in our history," Hurd charged. "The crisis that we’ve seen and the fact that they don’t want to call it a crisis is shocking to me."
Hurd argued that the Biden administration’s "policies have actually encouraged illegal immigration… They’re treating everybody who’s coming into the country as an asylum seeker….That is what is causing the volume of people coming from over 180 different states."
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But Hurd – who’s a vocal Republican critic of Trump, the current commanding front-runner in the GOP nomination race – argued that "treating everybody as an asylum seeker started under Donald Trump and something that Joe Biden continued. And Joe Biden just added fuel to that fire. So doing that is something we would stop on day one."
Hurd pledged if elected to the White House that he would resume construction of the border wall begun under Trump and halted by Biden in "some places where a physical barrier makes sense." But he added that in addition, "you need to be deploying technology along the border as well."
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The former CIA spy on Tuesday will head to the northern reaches of New Hampshire to join local authorities for a tour of the U.S. border with Canada. Hurd said he hopes get a better "understanding of the interplay between border patrol and local law enforcement."
"The amount of miles that we have on the northern border and the so few people patrolling it. How easy it is to get back and forth across the northern border. I think in the last six months there’s been over 400 people that have been on the known and suspected terrorist watch list that have been apprehended coming through the northern border. That’s just the people that we know are coming in," Hurd emphasized.
And he also spotlighted that "when you look at the amount of fentanyl that is coming into the country, that’s coming from China, a lot of it is going to Canada. We always talk about Mexico – but much of it is going to Canada and coming through our northern border as well."
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Hurd, who launched his long shot bid for the GOP nomination last Thursday, reiterated in his Fox Digital interview that he won’t sign the pledge to support the eventual GOP 2024 nominee which the Republican National Committee is mandating that all candidates sign in order to make the stage at the first debate in August, which Fox News is hosting.
While Hurd’s decision – due to his opposition to Trump - could jeopardize his ability to make the debate stage, he stressed "I just can’t lie to the American people in order to earn a microphone. It would be for me to say ‘yeah, I’ll do it,’ and then not support at the end. But I just can’t lie to people about that."
"I’ve taken one oath in my life, and that’s to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. I’ve taken one vow and that’s to my amazing, beautiful wife. And I take one pledge, and that’s when I put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to the United States of America," Hurd said. "So I won’t be singing the pledge but guess what – I’m going to be accessible. I’m going to talk about ideas. I’m going to talk about the future – not just complain about the past. I’m not going to be petty. So I will get my message out other ways."
Hurd - who was the only Black Republican in the House during his final two years in Congress - has plenty of company on Tuesday in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the Republican presidential nominating calendar following Iowa.
Trump and Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis, who trails the former president by double digits but leads the rest of the field of GOP contenders in the latest primary polls, will capture the spotlight as they hold what's being billed as competing events. And former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur, author, and conservative commentator Vivek Ramaswamy are also campaigning in the Granite State.
Hurd said he'll spend plenty of time in the state.
"New Hampshire appreciates a dark horse candidate like me. New Hampshire appreciates people who have ideas and so this is a place that is going to very important in for me to build the operation and the momentum to go further into this process," he said. "So you’ll be seeing a lot of me in New Hampshire."
