During a news conference Oct. 27 at Mission’s Anzalduas Park, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the Rio Grande Valley is one of his favorite places to visit, but “unfortunately, it’s being spoiled by the Biden administration’s reckless policies that do nothing to deter illegal immigration.” Also shown (from left) are U.S. Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) and Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Fatima Gamez Lopez/THE RIDER
Four Republican senators gathered in Mission’s Anzalduas Park after a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border and criticized the Biden administration’s policy on immigration, which they say is leading to the sexual abuse of women and children by cartels.
On Oct. 27, U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz led their Senate colleagues Mike Lee (R-Utah), John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) in both night and daytime tours of the border with law enforcement on land and water. Barrasso did not attend the news conference.
Cornyn said the Rio Grande Valley is one of his favorite places to visit.
“This is a vibrant part of our state,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s being spoiled by the Biden administration’s reckless policies that do nothing to deter illegal immigration and facilitate the death of 108,000 Americans last year alone, and hundreds of thousands of lost children, lost to sponsors in the interior of the United States with unknown outcomes.”
Cornyn said 108,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of drugs coming across the border, including 71,000 from fentanyl alone.
“Fentanyl is a leading cause of death of 18-to-45-year-olds in the United States, the leading cause of death from drugs,” he said. “This is manufactured … in Mexico and smuggled across the border into the interior.”
The senators visited the U.S. Border Patrol’s Ursula Central Processing Center in McAllen and met with the National Border Patrol Council, State of Texas Border Czar Mike Banks, local law enforcement and South Texas landowners to discuss the impact of the Biden administration’s border policies on Texas communities.
The senators received briefings from leaders of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector and the U.S. Customs & Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations Laredo Field Office on efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
“South Texas is an extraordinary place and South Texas is paying the price for the disaster of the open borders under the Biden administration,” Cruz said during the news conference. “On this trip, we came down, five senators altogether. We started the trip by going to the Border Patrol station and joining their midnight muster.”
He said Border Patrol agents’ jobs are made “impossible” by the political leadership of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Cruz said within an hour of their night tour they encountered a group of 20 people, predominantly women and children.
In the group, there were two girls, ages 13 and 16, and a 15-year-old boy who were unaccompanied.
“We asked them about the violence they faced,” Cruz said. “The look on those kids’ faces was horrifying. For me, the most disturbing part of the conversation was a little girl … who was 10 years old.”
The 10-year-old was accompanied by a man “who said he was her father, with his arm draped forcefully around her,” he said.
“And, it was obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a father and daughter, these two were not related,” Cruz said. “At one point, when we asked about her mother, we saw her look [at] the man who was claiming to be her dad, wondering what the answer [was] supposed to be.”
During the Trump administration, children were regularly DNA tested who were accompanied by an adult and 30% of children DNA tested were found not to be related to the person, he said.
“One of the first things Joe Biden did was end the DNA test because, apparently, Democrats don’t care if that 10-year-old girl is related to the adult man that the cartel handed her over,” Cruz said.
He said it was “horrifying” to know that there is a chance the teenage girls were being taken off to be trafficked for sex.
“This is a humanitarian crisis,” Cruz said. “South Texas sees the thousands of children abused, sees thousands of women sexually abused, sees the dead bodies. We saw pictures, picture after picture after picture. Eight hundred fifty-three people died last year crossing illegally into this country.”
He said he believes the risk of terrorism in the U.S. today is greater than it has been at any point since 9/11.
During the news conference, Lee said the majority of the women and girls brought to the U.S. are sexually assaulted along the way and forced into the sex trade.
“This is slavery,” Lee said. “This is involuntary servitude. This is indentured servitude, and we can’t let it happen.”
He encourages people to not make the “dangerous journey” to the U.S.
“Please do not send your wives, sisters and daughters for this horrific journey to be sexually abused by coyotes and cartels,” Lee said in Spanish. “We hear story after story of traffickers kidnapping women and children.”
He said in 2019, the New York Times documented dozens of encounters of these women. He mentioned the story of a mother of three children from Guatemala.
“For many weeks, the men she paid to bring her safely to the United States drugged her with pills and cocaine,” Lee said. “They didn’t even allow her to go out to bathe.
He said the woman said she was “raped so many times that they stopped seeing us as human beings.”
“These women and girls are human beings,” Lee said. “ … We have to protect them. It’s something we can’t accept. Not here in this country. Not today or ever.”
Ricketts said during the news conference the number of immigrants crossing is affecting the country.
“When we talk to the Customs and Border Patrol folks … the first thing they say is change the policy,” he said. “They’re spending more time processing people than actually guarding the border. This must end. … And it will only end when … Joe Biden takes responsibility for the human suffering he is causing right here in our own country and changes these policies.”
Cruz said there are roughly 110,000 illegal immigrants in New York City.
“New York City is a hell of a lot bigger than McAllen, Texas,” he said. “Just in the Rio Grande Valley sector, Border Patrol agents have detained over 1 million illegal immigrants in the last two and a half years. If 110,000 is destroying a giant metropolis like New York, what about the devastation here in South Texas?”
