Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) responded this week to a Daily Wire report about a land developer in Texas who has created an expansive settlement north of Houston where thousands of illegal immigrants are believed to have settled, saying that Democrats “must stop” creating the incentives that are causing the problem.

Located in Liberty County, Texas, near the small town of Plum Grove, the Colony Ridge development is a sprawling community that, based on an analysis of publicly available information, is now over 60 square miles and nearly the size of the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Its population is estimated to be anywhere between 50,000 to 75,000, and it is growing rapidly thanks to a marketing plan targeted at Texas’ Hispanic population.

Barrasso, who is the third-ranking member in the Senate Republican leadership as Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, highlighted the piece in post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Joe Biden surrendered our Southern Border to illegal immigration and set up a welcome wagon for criminals, gangs and drug dealers,” said Barrasso. “Democrats must stop the incentives that fuel this crisis and secure the border.”

Joe Biden surrendered our Southern Border to illegal immigration and set up a welcome wagon for criminals, gangs and drug dealers.

Democrats must stop the incentives that fuel this crisis and secure the border. https://t.co/rjgYvrPGeH

— Sen. John Barrasso (@SenJohnBarrasso) September 22, 2023

The Daily Wire surveyed the development by helicopter to assess the true extent of its growth. The flight began in the wealthy Woodlands neighborhood, but it was only minutes before the designer homes and pools gave way to half-built homes, dilapidated trailers, and heaps of trash.

Houses on the ground fly the flags of foreign countries and many homes display their addresses on spray painted pieces of plywood. Many structures, some of which are not hooked up to running water, were under construction, while others were unfinished, but didn’t appear to be actively getting worked on. At least one plot of land didn’t have any structures at all, just a tent in the corner, nestled between shrubs. Stray dogs without collars could be seen trotting along the side of the underdeveloped streets.

Barrasso slammed that Biden administration during press conference with Senate Republicans this week, saying that President Joe Biden “has surrendered our southern border to drug dealers, criminal cartels, and gang members.”

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“We’re still awaiting numbers from last month, but it looks like it’s going to be an all-time high record-breaking month of over a quarter of a million illegal immigrants coming into the United States,” he said. “They get here and then they vanish. That’s what we are dealing with in the United States today.”

Barrasso said that the Mexican cartels are making billions of dollars smuggling illegal aliens and illicit drugs into the U.S.

“Criminals are coming from all around the world, Africa, the Middle East, and China,” he said. “It used to be that border states and border cities were some places in Texas or some places in Arizona — no, not anymore. The city council in Chicago and the mayor of New York City have actually said that their own cities are being destroyed by the illegal immigrants who continue to come. And remember, these are sanctuary cities.”

“Fentanyl is a major killer all across the United States,” he continued. “And what does our incompetent president and the Democrats in the Senate do? They keep their heads buried in the sand and as we’ve just heard from Senator Haggerty, now they want to defund ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What do they want to do with the money? They want to set up a Welcome Wagon, to set up housing and services for those folks.”

“Republicans have a much better idea, it’s Secure The Border Act of 2023,” he said. “That legislation includes the technology, the manpower and the physical barrier that we need. That’s what we need to do to protect our communities, provide safety in America, and actually secure our border.”

Billion-dollar cartels are flooding our border with illegal immigrants & deadly drugs that are affecting our entire country. Instead of stopping them, @JoeBiden wants to defund @ICEgov & set up a welcome wagon for them. Republicans will continue to fight to secure our border. pic.twitter.com/lBSuCdB2xK

— Sen. John Barrasso (@SenJohnBarrasso) September 20, 2023

Related: DeSantis Responds To Daily Wire Report On Illegal Immigrant Development In Texas: ‘I Will End This’

Sacramento’s top prosecutor sued the city this week over its homeless encampments, accusing city officials of allowing the homeless population to become a public nuisance.

Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho announced his lawsuit on Tuesday, two months after he first threatened legal action. A companion lawsuit was also filed by residents and business owners.

“We have an erosion of everyday life,” Ho said Tuesday during a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We forget what it feels like to be safe and that brings us to this lawsuit … because we need to get people off the streets.”

Sacramento’s homeless population has soared over the last several years.

Last year, the city had a record nearly 9,300 homeless people, up 67% from just three years earlier in 2019, according to last year’s Point-In-Time Count. The count also reported more than 1,600 tents and 1,100 vehicles being used for shelter, up five times from 2019.

“Enough is enough,” Ho told the Sacramento Bee. “We need to address this public safety crisis for both the housed and the unhoused.”

In his suit, Ho alleged that Sacramento failed to enforce local laws and allowed the city’s “descent into decay and this utter collapse into chaos.”

Ho has asked the city to enforce city ordinances on problems like sidewalk obstructions, unlawful storage, dumping, fires, and camping, the lawsuit says. He has also asked the city to audit the millions of dollars spent on the homeless crisis, according to the suit.

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Camping is not allowed during the day on City Hall property, the lawsuit says, and Ho has asked the city “to extend that same protection that they give to themselves to the rest of the City,” but to no avail.

“The unhoused deserve to feel and be safe,” the lawsuit states, adding that nine out of 10 women who are chronically homeless have been victims of sexual assault.

“It’s not compassionate to let someone die in the sweltering summer sun or freeze to death in the cold winter night. It’s not compassionate to allow unsafe conditions to fester so badly that a 14-year-old boy cannot ride his bike to school or a group of little girls can’t play soccer on a field littered with needles. It’s not compassionate when someone in a wheelchair cannot use a sidewalk blocked by tents or a small business is forced to close forever due to repeated broken windows and vandalism,” the lawsuit says.

Other California cities have been struggling with a homeless crisis as well.

San Francisco has been in the throes of a homelessness crisis for years now, and it has only gotten worse since before the pandemic.

About 38,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area on a given night, up 35% since 2019. More than 7,000 people are homeless in San Francisco itself.

In August, San Francisco Mayor London Breed joined more than 200 protesters to call for an end to a federal restriction on the city’s ability to clear homeless encampments.

Nearly a third of the country’s homeless people live in California, according to a June statewide study from a research group at the University of California, San Francisco.