Last Friday, April 12 I had the opportunity to visit the US Border in Texas at Eagle Pass. This site is the famous area where several thousand illegal immigrants were crossing each day just a few months ago. During the height of the crisis at Eagle Pass, TX the US Border Patrol could not process the illegal immigrants fast enough.
Today, I am proud to say that because of the work of hard-working Texas law enforcement, National Guardsmen from across the Country who have been deployed, and others the tidal wave of illegals has been slowed to a trickle.
As a State Representative, it is important to know the issues that are affecting our state and to view them for myself. President Biden’s failed immigration policies have made every state a border state, including the State of Iowa.
What I found at the border at Eagle Pass Texas is that the cartels, who are very organized in this process, are engaging in inhumane acts of all sorts to include human trafficking, kidnapping, raping women and small children, and making a lot of money off the migrants who they are smuggling across the border.
The Texas State Police, Texas State Guard, and deployed National Guardsmen from across the country are trying to push the people to approved and safe points of entry so they are not harmed.
In fact, while I was on an airboat looking at the barriers in place from the river side of things, it was announced on the radio that a “floater” was seen East of our location. A floater is a dead person in the water and so we could not continue the full tour of the barriers that we were intended while the law enforcement could recover the body. I asked about the floater and asked how often that happens and was told once or twice a week, they must respond to someone who has drowned or in some way lost their life attempting to cross into the U.S.
In addition, to the poor and inhumane treatment these immigrants receive trying to get to our country there is a national security issue where we have more nations trying to enter our country than just South American and Central American people. People from every country in the world have been caught entering our country illegally. In 2023 alone, 22,000 Chinese nationals have been apprehended by the Border Patrol. These 22,000 Chinese nationals, were almost entirely young military age men.
A typical number of people who get away because there is simply not enough border patrol or law enforcement to catch them is about 1 in 2. If that holds true with the Chinese nationals, then that would mean over 44,000 Chinese nationals entered our country illegally in 2023. To make it worse as of April 5, 2024, there have already been 22,233 Chinese nationals caught crossing into the United States. Why is there this volume of Chinese nationals entering our country illegally? This doesn’t consider the volumes of Russian, Turkish, Iranians, Syrians, and others coming across our borders.
Among other people who were seized in 2023 35,433 people were found to have criminal convictions or outstanding warrants nationwide, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members.
Let’s talk about the other national safety issue that we learned about on Friday. In 2023 the Law Enforcement operation trying to combat illegal entry into our country seized 27,293 pounds of fentanyl that came across our border. That is enough fentanyl to kill 6 billion people, almost 2/3 of the world’s population of men, women, and children in the world. Federal officials estimate they are only able to seize 5 – 10% of the illegal drugs smuggled across the Southwest border.
I saw, with my own eyes, the devastation that is being leveled on the Texas border. They are proud of the accomplishments that they have achieved by putting barriers in place, being straightforward with their policies, and doing things that work to slow the tide. In Eagle Pass, they have gone from 3 to 5 thousand individuals coming across per day to 30. That doesn’t mean the problem has ended, it has just shifted away from the area.
This is a failure, not of the boots on the ground but of folks in Washington D.C. and specifically with President Joe Biden who is simply not enforcing the law that has been given to him. Our news media is not reporting the truth and each American should be upset with the humanitarian crisis that is happening at our Southern border. Having seen it with my own eyes, I can’t believe the news media isn’t at the border every minute of the day.
