I recently made my second visit to the U.S.-Mexico border to see firsthand what is going on and to help find solutions. That’s two more visits than Joe Biden has made.
As a legal immigrant from Colombia, South America, who came here legally 50 years ago and followed the process to become a U.S. citizen, this issue is personal to me. I have deep empathy and compassion for foreign citizens seeking a better life in America.
In the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, I witnessed just some of the true human cost of Biden’s open border policies. These policies are not compassionate. They are barbaric.
My team and I met a group crossing the border illegally from Nicaragua. They told me they were held up at gunpoint by members of a drug cartel, and the women were sexually assaulted. The cartel took every item of value they had, and even cavity-searched them to make certain they had handed over everything. That was one “tax” these people and millions of others pay to cross the border, which is now controlled by international drug cartels.
This is the result of the Biden administration ending both President Trump’s agreement with Mexico to have their military protect the border and the “remain in Mexico” policy, whereby migrants would wait on the Mexico side of the border while their asylum cases were heard.
We met with Border Patrol agents who told us of their daily struggles of being understaffed, assaulted, and spat on by violent criminals. Many continue to show up to work with no support from Washington, or even from local prosecutors. Many others are retiring, quitting over senseless vaccine mandates, or simply finding other more forgiving jobs.
They told us stories of hundreds of migrants dying along the dangerous journey through multiple countries. They also told us, unequivocally, that they need a completed border wall and a reinstatement of President Trump’s remain in Mexico policy. These brave Americans who patrol our border say this is the only chance they have of restoring order.
We observed sections of the border wall that were completed during the Trump administration. We also observed sections of the wall that our government paid for and staged to be assembled, but which have been left on the ground, rusting, since January 20, 2021, the day Biden was inaugurated and ordered construction stopped.
As a taxpayer, I am infuriated to see this cavalier wasting of our money. As a human being, I am disheartened, along with members of the community, who would be protected by this physical barrier, but who are now left to fend for themselves against a daily invasion of their towns.
We saw clothing, luggage, and hundreds of pounds of trash abandoned on private land. We saw dangerous conditions and desperate people. We saw chaos. What we didn’t see was Covid testing being done, despite the government requiring U.S. citizens to pass a Covid test to re-enter their own country.
Unfortunately, such suffering and heartache do not end at the border. Every state in America is now a border state, as the Biden administration is sending flights full of illegal migrants into communities around the nation, sometimes in the middle of the night. Ohio is experiencing record overdose deaths, especially due to fentanyl.
More young people are dying from overdoses than from Covid, car accidents, or suicide. These drugs are being smuggled across the southern border and distributed across the nation. Just a few weeks ago, one man was found with enough illegal fentanyl in his possession to kill half the state of Ohio. This is being made possible by Biden’s reckless policies.
Like most problems D.C. politicians refuse to solve, this one is not complicated. We need to build the remaining part of the wall. We need to fully reinstate the remain in Mexico policy. We need to have asylum seekers apply in their home countries. We need to support and fund our Border Patrol and send the U.S. military there to help them stop the surge of migrants. We need to designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and wipe them off the face of the Earth.
We cannot allow Mexico to become a failed narco-state. I saw as Colombia almost fell during the 1980s and 1990s. Mexico is our largest trading partner and shares almost 2,000 miles of border with the United States. In short, we need to have an orderly system of legal immigration.
Biden once knew this and has either forgotten or has chosen to side with the radical leftists that want to destroy America. He allows this shameful status quo to continue because of Democrats’ craven desire for power.
They think that if they allow illegal migrants into our country, eventually they will be allowed to vote, and they are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. They are using these migrants as political pawns in a “Hunger Games”-style sick game, encouraging them to make the long and deadly journey through Mexico to our border. It is certainly not about compassion. It’s about politics.
These are the things the corporate media will not cover or say out loud. But it is the truth. The people of Ohio know this and want their elected officials to be honest and call it like it is, even when it is uncomfortable to hear.
Although I was sickened by what I saw as a result of Biden’s shameful failure of leadership, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We know what to do to improve things.
As the Border Patrol agents told me, they simply need good policy. Once the voters have a chance to weigh in this November, Republicans will gain control of Congress and we will have an opportunity to legislate and save countless lives as a result.
