I got this in my email today from John Ratcliffe:

Hi Friends,

As President Trump said in his address to our nation this week, there is only one reason our government remains shut down: the Democrats’ stubborn refusal to fund much-need border security.

In response to the President’s call for Democrats to stop playing politics with America’s safety, Nancy Pelosi declared that the crisis at our Southern Border is “manufactured.” But the facts speak otherwise:

2,000 inadmissible migrants arrive at the border every day

Our immigration courts have a backlog of over 800,000 cases

ICE has arrested 260,000 aliens with criminal records in the last two years, including aliens charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, nearly 300,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings

90 percent of heroin in our country is flowing across our Southern Border, causing the death of 300 Americans each week

DHS has seen an over 100-percent increase in fraudulent family units at the Southern border in the last two months - about nine per day

In 2006, 26 Senate Democrats - including then-Sen. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer - all voted to allocate $50 billion over 25 years for 700 miles of fencing along the border. And in 2009, Chuck Schumer said, “Illegal Immigration is wrong, plain and simple. Until the American people are convinced we will stop future flows of illegal immigration, we will make no progress.”

But today, Democrats are committed to opposing President Trump at every turn, even if it means abandoning their obligation as lawmakers to ensure the security of our country.

As the border funding battles wage on, I’ve voted to ensure back pay for all our dedicated public servants who have unjustly been put out of work thanks to political games, and I have requested for my own pay to be withheld until the shutdown ends.

You can count on me to remain committed to ensuring our law enforcement professionals and border agents with the resources they’ve requested - including a physical barrier - so they can properly perform their mission to protect us from the criminal gangs, drug smugglers and human traffickers seeping into our country.