‘They’re yelling at us’: Cruz tweets videos showing ‘smugglers’ on other side of border
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz after midnight on Thursday tweeted videos from the southern border, where he claimed human traffickers across the Rio Grande had been taunting him and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.
“That's Mexico, and you can see there's three smugglers right there, standing on the Mexico side, looking at us,” Cruz said over blurry footage showing shadowy figures in the glare of a flashlight. “They've been shining their flashlights at us; they're yelling at us.”
It was a preview of Friday's events in the Rio Grande Valley as at least 19 Senate Republicans were in Donna, where leaked photographs earlier this week showed cramped conditions and kids sleeping on stone floors. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of
San Antonio led a group of House Democrats to Carrizo Springs, which has a shelter for migrant children where the Biden administration allowed a TV crew to film kids playing soccer and gathered under a gazebo.
Cruz said in another video that the senators had already visited crowded CBP sites.
“We've already gone to detention facilities that are overrun, many of them with families, small children,” he said. “We saw multiple mothers who were nursing infant babies, who had just crossed over and were being housed in outdoor holding pins where they were sleeping on the floor and nursing their babies.”
The administration said Thursday there were more than 4,900 children still in Border Patrol custody this week but said it is “making progress” on more quickly transferring them to sites run by the Department of Health and Human Services, where they stay while officials work to find sponsors to care for them in the U.S. Officials said 465 children were transferred Tuesday, up from an average of 302 for the 30 days before that.
Democrats were mocking Cruz on Friday. “THANK GOD YOU SURVIVED THE HECKLING!” Beto O'rourke, who ran against Cruz in 2018, tweeted in response to the senator's video. “You're in a Border Patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler). If you're looking for a crisis to cosplay Senator for, I'm happy to point you in the right direction.”