The House Homeland Security Committee will take a road trip to South Texas this week to hear testimony on the flood of illegal immigrants from Central America into Texas, Newsradio 1200 WOAI news reports.

Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tx) tells Newsradio 1200 WOAI's  Michael Board that the goal is not to preach politics but to come up with solutions, and he says the number one solution is not to release 14 year olds with a bus ticket and best wishes.

"A lot of these children actually are 14 and over, so I think if we went for mandatory detention and removal, we would see a lot of these crossings stopped," McCaul said. President Obama today will announce plans to ask Congress to 'fast track' measures to allow the adults and older teenagers to be deported immediately. 

McCaul praised the President's moves. "What the Administration could do is, those who are 14 and other, could be under mandatory detention and removal, and they're not dong that," he said. Under current law, anybody over the age of 14 who comes into the U.S. illegally from Mexico can be immediately deported. But under a 2008 law designed, ironically, to fight human sex trafficking, anybody who comes from a country 'other than Mexico' must go through a complicated legal process before being sent back.

McCaul says in this case, where the Central Americans are clearly coming voluntarily, that law should be rescinded. Another problem, McCaul says, is finding enough room to house the teenagers and adults pending deportation hearings.  He says the current policy of allowing them to go live with a relative in the U.S. on the 'promise' that they will show up for a deportation hearing isn't working. "That's a failure of enforcement, and it's also a failure of policies from this administration that is encouraging this migration," McCaul said.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) agrees.  He says when people start returning to Honduras under deportation orders after giving as much as $10,000 to a criminal immigrant smuggler to get them into Texas, the claims being made by the smugglers that 'anybody who gets to the U.S. will be allowed to stay' will no longer be believed. 

Much of the current wave of Central American immigrants into the U.S. is being driven by drug cartels which are looking to branch out as their drug profits have slipped.  They are telling desperate people in crime ridden slums of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that if they just get into the U.S., they will be allowed to remain in the country.