TYLER, Texas (KETK) – East Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran visited Eagle Pass this week along with three other congressmen.

“We cannot lose sight of one of our primary responsibilities, and that is to secure the border,” said Moran.

Moran represents roughly 17 East Texas counties in the U.S. House of Representatives. He and other House Republicans visited the border this week to see the situation there first-hand.

“I was shocked at how casual it was that people were just coming over in hundreds, thousands by the day just there in Eagle Pass,” said Moran.

The proof is in the numbers. One of the new processing facilities they stopped by was past their 1,000 person capacity. Nearly 5,000 people were processed Monday alone. Moran says he witnessed a family crossing despite the hurdles in their way.

“They knew once they got on the other side, within hours they would be processed in this facility I was referring to and then within days at an NGO (non-governmental organization), and never have to account for that behavior,” said Moran.

He believes the key to securing the border is more funding. Moran said with the government days away from a potential shutdown, now may be the time to work the issue into the funding bill.

“What we really need to accomplish is reducing spending, we need to roll back liberal policies, but we also need to, at the top of the list, secure our border,” said Moran.

The Congressman said by adding money for border security, Congress can hopefully force federal policy changes into place.

“What we need to do is pass something with border security attached to it, long-term border security policy, get that to the senate and jam them up and jam the president up,” said Moran.

The road ahead is still uncertain and difficult, he explained.

“There’s nobody to blame but the House Republicans, we as a group are the ones that were the bottleneck in this process, we have to look in the mirror and to figure out why it is that we put politics above policy,” said Moran.

Regardless, he says the border needs attention right now.

“We are not just talking about an issue on the border that is an issue of the sovereignty of the nation, and that is the case, but we’re also talking about national security of the interior of our nation,” said Moran.

A government shutdown could happen as soon as this weekend, but Moran assured that the U.S. Congress is working to make sure that doesn’t happen.