U.S. Rep. French Hill spent time along the Rio Grande last week, the dividing line that separates Texas from Mexico.
It was the Little Rock Republican's latest trip to the nation's southern boundary.
"In the three years I've been in Congress, I've been to the border to El Paso and San Diego and to Laredo, so this is my fourth visit to the southwest border," Hill said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon.
This time, his destination was Del Rio, Texas, a community of about 40,000 roughly 150 miles west of San Antonio.
"I wanted to go to a smaller city that's not a major point of entry and look at a smaller population area with more rugged canyonlike terrain along the Rio Grande River for an assessment of how we can best secure the border from a technology and manpower point of view," he said.
Del Rio sits across from Ciudad Acuna; a border town immortalized in the George Strait hit "Blame it on Mexico."
When he was running for president in 2016, Donald Trump made building a border wall a priority.
But Hill said he places a higher priority on personnel.
"I think manpower is the top issue along the border. I've heard that consistently in my four trips," he said.
The existing border personnel are stretched too thin, he said.
The next-highest priority is technology, Hill said.
"Consistently I've been in cities where they have poles for camera technology, but they don't have the cameras on the poles. That was the case down in Laredo, and that's the case here in Del Rio, too," Hill said.
The shortages exist "despite technology budgets being robust," Hill said. "In the appropriations bill we passed last [month], there was almost $200 million in there for border security technology."
The appropriations bill also clears the way for 100 new judges to be hired so that the backlog of immigration law cases can be dealt with, Hill added.