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Missouri Sen. McCaskill to visit US-Mexico border

Claire McCaskill is going to the U.S.-Mexico border next week.
File photo | Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Claire McCaskill is going to the U.S.-Mexico border next week.

Missouri Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill plans to spend the congressional recess next week tooling along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She said Thursday that her aim is to get a first-hand look at border security issues and the best solutions. 

“Getting border security right is a critical and complex task for keeping our nation secure,” McCaskill said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to hearing directly from the folks on the ground who work on this every day, and seeing firsthand the challenges and successes they see during efforts to secure our border.”

President Donald Trump has pledged to complete construction of a wall across the United States’ southern border; there already is fencing or a wall along some portions.

The trip will mark her first official trip to the border as a senator. McCaskill plans to meet with members of the federal Border Patrol, the mayor of McAllen, Texas, and consulate officials from various Latin American countries, spokesman Drew Pusateri  said.

The statement didn't give specific dates or a duration for the trip, which will include tours by land, air and the Rio Grande River. She expects to remain on the U.S. side of the border, although the helicopter rides periodically may veer into Mexico’s territory.

Pusateri said McCaskill will be accompanied by aides, but not by other members of Congress.

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Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.