This is an opinion column.

Deport everyone in the country who is here without legal status. It sounds easy enough. Finish the wall. Again, it’s a clear idea. Why is it so hard to accomplish? On the other side, the solution is creating a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who haven’t followed proper channels. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis at America’s southern border grows worse by the day.

When I saw that Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) took an official trip to the Del Rio Sector of the border on a trip led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), I didn’t react positively.

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While it’s true that it took Britt 712 fewer days to make her way to the border than President Joe Biden, that fact misses the point entirely. Legions of politicians have made their way to the border over the last several years to observe what Americans see daily on television. We’ve become comfortably numb to drone views portraying a ghastly scene on cable news day after day.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is “encountering” (read: arrested or apprehended) an average of more than 239,000 migrants per month along the nation’s southwest border this fiscal year. It’s a flood that will only worsen when COVID-related policies allowing rapid expulsions at the border are removed.

Commonly known as Title 42, the decades-old law permits the federal government to take emergency actions to “stop the introduction of communicable diseases.” Since March 2020, the law has given the border patrol agents the authority to expel migrants to their home country or the country they were last in, which is often Mexico. Our politicians and courts are now arguing whether or not we can or should remove it.

America is relying on a pandemic to address an immigration nightmare. That isn’t a good sign.

Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that our border is not secure. Democrats who argue against building the wall make the problem worse. No, a physical wall is not the solution in every context, but allowing a quarter million people to just walk across the border a month is laughable. And that’s just the number we know about.

Successfully securing the border isn’t inhumane. We have legal ports of entry that must be respected.

Americans should also get over the idea that we’re simply going to apprehend and deport everyone in the United States without legal status. Politicians love to capitalize on the simplicity of the solution without discussing the logistical impossibility.

U.S. officials have no idea how many people are in the country without legal authorization. According to the Congressional Research Service, the number is around 11 million. A 2018 Yale study concluded the number could be more than 22 million.

On the low end, that’s roughly equivalent to deporting almost the entire population of Tennessee and Alabama scattered across the United States. On the high end, you’d need to throw in the population of Georgia. Even if there were a realistic law enforcement operation which could identify, apprehend, and remove everyone here without status, the public outcry would be unimaginable. Many of the undocumented are friends, neighbors, and members of our communities.

Undocumented immigrants also come from a wide number of countries. In the most recent fiscal year, Mexicans only accounted for about a third of the encounters along the United States’ southern border. Ascertaining countries of origin and repatriating citizens efficiently is a monumentally difficult challenge.

For example, the United States encountered more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in FY2022. While Mexico has agreed to accept migrants from Venezuela, frosty relations between the United States and those three nations makes deportations difficult. The Biden administration recently announced humanitarian parole caps for these nations and Haiti as a stop-gap measure until Congress addresses the situation.

The logistical realities shouldn’t mean that those without legal status receive priority above immigrants who follow legal channels. Our immigration code is unfathomably stupid. The United States has multi-year bars on re-entry for various immigration violations when we should be incentivizing people who violate the law to voluntarily leave and return through proper channels. Children brought here without status should have far less legal culpability than their parents. Our asylum shouldn’t build trauma on trauma, but we can’t allow it to be abused either.

Immigration is a complicated issue that doesn’t fit conveniently in political sound bites. We should stop expecting simple policy solutions.

The U.S. immigration system bureaucracy is a monument to congressional failure second only to the nation’s Internal Revenue Service. Nations around the world have point-based immigration systems that reflect the economic and social priorities of their respective citizens. When I worked for former Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was amazed to find dozens of common sense reforms that should pass without much trouble. They were all held hostage to either a path to citizenship for the undocumented or funding for a continuous border wall.

Against this backdrop, I reached out to Sen. Britt concerned with what I assumed was another trip to cast blame and score political points. Her response wasn’t the typical political hedge I’m used to hearing.

“This trip was an important opportunity for me to listen to and learn from the people who are facing this every single day, from boots-on-the-ground law enforcement officers to courageous survivors of the cartels’ human and drug trafficking,” Alabama’s newest senator said. “I think we have far too many people in D.C. who think they have all of the answers without ever trying to understand firsthand perspectives….I want to be the kind of leader who doesn’t just talk about problems, but who actually takes concrete actions to make a positive difference. To that end, we will be introducing multiple pieces of legislation on the issue of border security and immigration in the coming weeks.”

Most politicians won’t put themselves on the clock. Britt invites the challenge. As a friend who wants her to succeed, I also plan on following up in a few weeks to see what she drops in the legislative hopper.

Britt also needs Blackburn, other Republicans, and more than a few Democrats to join her. The political will to secure common sense immigration reforms has been in short supply for decades. On an issue where doing nothing has been the norm, hopefully Britt’s tenacity and energy is enough to prod the Senate into action.

Smith is a recovering political attorney with four boys, two dogs, a bearded dragon, and an extremely patient wife. He engages media, business, and policy through the Triptych Foundation and Triptych Media. Please direct outrage or agreement to [email protected] or @DCameronSmith on Twitter.