INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — What the country should do at the U.S. border with Mexico is a polarizing topic.

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, told I-Team 8 that the number of people coming across the southern border every month is staggering. Every month, the population of Indianapolis is entering the United States. The conditions at the border are deplorable.

“Something has got to give, I think, with another year of it between now and next November as the major election issue along with the economy,” Braun said.

Video of the barbwire fence on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River was sent to I-Team 8 from Henry County Sheriff John Sproles, one of 24 Indiana sheriff’s with the sheriff’s association who traveled with Braun to the border.

Braun says border patrol agents and police in that area are stretched to the limit. He said a visiting sheriff from Florida jumped into the river to save a infant from drowning.

“It is going on constantly. So, it’s triage. It is trying to save people, and you keep pushing due to the lack of policies that were working to stay in Mexico. Everything was working, Biden didn’t like, reversed it, and now you have numbers that are so different with the tragic consequences,” Braun said. 

The barbwire fence draped along the shore holds a collection of shirts, pants, plastic bottles and trash. The fence and border patrol agents have done little to keep people attempting to come into the country from doing so.

Braun says drugs, mainly fentanyl, coming across the border can be found all over Indiana. 

“When I met with some Lake County law enforcement people about nine months to a year ago, that was the subject of fentanyl, and how it is swamping their area up there. Well, when you take another nine months of that, it’s impacting all of our counties, and, to put it into perspective, at the tail end of the Trump administration, 15,000 to 20,000 illegal crossings. There wasn’t a term ‘got-aways,’” Braun said. 

The senator says there is a sharp increase in the number of people crossing the border from outside of south and central American. He says people from 169 different countries are crossing the border and many of the people aren’t seeking asylum.

“I think you are going to have many even people that are risking their lives, losing family, once they get here, get to New York or Chicago, and find out we just don’t have the capacity.”