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I recently went to an event by The America Project where Jaeson Jones, the CEO of Omni Intelligence, spoke to attendees at the event. In a room of a few hundred people, you could hear a pin drop when he said, “The U.S. Southern border invasion is the biggest national security failure since 9/11.” He is right.
According to recently disclosed data from the U.S. Border Patrol and Customs, more than two million border crossings occurred when the Biden administration was in power. This includes thousands of pounds of illicit substances and people who are either smuggled or trafficked across the southern border. Make no mistake: the situation at our southern border is humiliating, and every American should be concerned.
You might be asking yourself: “How does an administration let this happen?” Well, when the second in command in the White House continuously downplays the situation at the border, this is the result. On Sunday’s “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd, Vice President Kamala Harris blamed the Trump administration while reassuring Americans that the border is “secure.” Trump left office on January 20, 2022, yet the Biden-Harris administration still attributes its wrongdoings to the previous administration.
My peers on the left frequently portray conservatives as being “anti-immigration.” This is not true at all. Conservatives like myself support lawful immigration. This is why we backed the Trump administration’s stance on immigration and the construction of the border wall. Immigrants who come here lawfully benefit from a truly “secure” border since they are granted citizenship rights, which aid them in finding jobs and a host of other advantages. The ideal kind of immigration makes this country great. However, even if they are coming to the United States seeking a better life, migrants who enter this country without a visa are here illegally under American law, and they do not have the same rights as citizens.
This is why Latinos like me were not at all outraged by Trump’s statement at the launch of his presidential campaign:
”When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
At the time, this statement naturally generated a lot of buzz on social media platforms and in the mainstream media. However, if you’re Latino and deal with the border crisis daily, you understand precisely what Trump was getting at. Latinos overwhelmingly switched from the Democratic party to the Republican party due to Trump’s remarks at the time and his administration’s efforts to protect the border. Since 2016, the election outcomes in South Texas have proven evidence of this. Republican support among Hispanics has increased by double digits and ultimately resulted in the election of Mayra Flores this year. In a June special election, Flores turned a historically Democratic seat in the Rio Grande Valley to a Republican seat, which narrowed the slim majority that Democrats have in the House.
The election of Mayra Flores represents a changing of the guard if you will. It stands for the fact that the Democratic Party and the Biden administration’s rhetoric about the border and various other issues do not reflect the views of the Hispanic community. These views include valuing God, family, and hard work. At the end of the day, we want our communities to be safe, just like other communities do.
We cannot forget that the cartel constantly outnumbers and outguns our Border Patrol, leaving our communities unsafe. There have been multiple stories of shootouts between our border patrol and the cartel members. This should be a bipartisan concern. Our border is not secure. Still, law enforcement officers are against a beast with cartels who have equal or superior weapons, and lives are on the line. These Border Patrol agents have family and friends, too.
If you’re curious, cartels track people who are being transported into the U.S. using wristbands. The wristbands display what cartel helped them cross over and how much they owe the cartel. This debt can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you are a human rights activist, how could you not be enraged that there are individuals, even children, that are being treated and branded like cattle by the cartels? Meanwhile, agents of the Border Patrol are working to halt this human smuggling while attacking the cartels with guns.
My hometown of Houston has experienced an unprecedented rise in crime and human trafficking cases. I know this firsthand because my father is a sergeant in the Houston Police Department and is currently working as a supervisor in the vice division. He also oversees the Southern District of Texas’s Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance (HTRA) Task Force.
When I was home from college in June and July this year, my father frequently woke up at about three in the morning to an emergency phone call. Sometimes, he was required to show up at the location of a trafficking victim’s rescue. My father told me that the Biden administration has made him the busiest he has ever been in 30 years of service, which is significant since he has spent most of my life working in the Narcotics division.
President Biden left Vice Present Kamala Harris in charge of the border at the beginning of his administration. So, my question to our Border Czar Kamala Harris is: would you have this many issues if the border was truly secure? The crisis at the border has affected not only my family but my community as well.
