San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Political rhetoric only fuels chaos on border
The willful blindness that American politicians engage in with respect to our southern border is endangering thousands of Americans and migrants daily, and it needs to end.
After touring the Rio Grande Valley sector of the southern border with U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement last week, I confirmed a few truths: The Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel has seized control of our border and is trafficking human beings and drugs for enormous profit; the cartel has more men, more guns and more resources than law enforcement; our broken asylum laws are allowing cartels to abuse Americans and the migrants who seek to come here for profit; and none of it will change until Congress stops the rhetoric and has sober conversations to find a solution.
In the Rio Grande Valley sector, which I’ve toured on multiple occasions, human smugglers profit from weekly revenue of more than $53 million. Across the entire border, drug cartels are making upward of $2 billion trafficking human beings. When migrants can’t pay the cartels their full fee for smuggling them across the border, they are beaten (Border Patrol played a video for me of this), or they are held as indentured servants, as was the case with two teenage boys I spoke with in January, feet from the Rio Grande. It happens every single day.
It isn’t just about the money. Men, women and children are being subjugated and abused. Roughly one-third of women attempting the journey across the border are sexually abused. Innocent children are rented by traffickers to get migrants across the border. Many of these children make more than one trip. That is right — cartels are recycling children. Border Patrol agents told me they caught a migrant man with his third child. After DNA testing, they found the child was not his.
While cartels are running the show, my Democratic colleagues have chosen to not target cartels, but to malign law enforcement. They’ve likened ICE and Border Patrol agents to the Gestapo and argued our agents are running “concentration camps.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
During my visit, I witnessed Border Patrol agents doing their best to process and care for migrants. I toured a processing facility in Donna. What I saw was a clean facility packed with food, an abundance of potable water and supplies, and medical and professional staff on hand to care for migrants.
What Border Patrol agents told me last week, and have told me all year, is they are struggling. That isn’t new to anyone paying attention. Testifying before Congress in June, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost told lawmakers she’s been forced to “divert 40 percent to 60 percent of Border Patrol’s manpower away from the border” to process and care for almost 900,000 migrants — of which some 600,000 are caught and released — crossing the border this year. I heard directly from Border Patrol agents that they sometimes have as few as 10 to 20 guys on the line in the 50-mile stretch. At its worst, they had three men patrolling a 50-mile stretch.
Sadly, there is an obvious impediment to ending this crisis — politicians who would rather use it as an issue to divide rather than unite us. For our nation to solve the crisis at hand, we need to have responsible conversations about border security. We should be uniting to find solutions that keep America sovereign and secure, while ensuring the migrants who seek to come here can do so legally and safely. If we can’t engage in honest and open debate about the border without partisan rhetoric, we will continue to empower cartels, undermine national security and put countless lives in danger.
It is no surprise that thousands of people seek to illegally cross our nation’s border each day. They are drawn to the hope of a better life for themselves and their children. They want to become part of the greatest nation the world has ever known.
But because we have allowed our borders to descend into chaos and lawlessness, we are in danger of losing what separates us from the other nations of the world. I believe we are the “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” To remain the beacon of light and hope in the world, we must move beyond the rhetoric and hate that has engulfed our nation like a sickness.