By FRANCISCO E. JIMENEZ and VALERIE GONZALEZ | STAFF WRITERS
McALLEN — Eight high-capacity, semi-automatic rifles were placed on a table in front of a podium here inside Meeting Room 102B of the McAllen Convention Center on Friday.
The weapons were seized by federal officers who stopped them from traveling south of the Rio Grande. They sat sandwiched between display boards summarizing other criminal activity along the border including drug and money seizures, as well as encounters of unaccompanied migrant children crossing illegally into the U.S.
As the display boards went up, a blue backdrop with the city of McAllen logo and its social media handle, @cityofmcallen, was taken down.
Posters with the hashtag, #bidenbordercrisis, were adhered to the podium and ready for the news conference with U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Republicans representing Texas, and a delegation of U.S. senators from Oklahoma, Iowa, Wyoming, Wisconsin, and North Dakota.
The senators toured the southern border from a blackhawk helicopter prior to their arrival at the convention center.
“It’s great to be back in Texas and here in the Rio Grande Valley,” Cornyn said during the conference. “I’m glad that Sen. Cruz and I could host some of our colleagues from the United States Senate to come down here and learn from the experts what’s actually happening here on the border.”
Each senator took time to discuss what they’d seen during their tour while weaving in criticism of President Joe Biden’s border policies and failure to visit the border.
“It’s an absolute disaster,” Cruz said, characterizing the state of the border. “It is inhumane. It is horrific.”
During the tour offered by the Border Patrol council, the senators witnessed groups of migrants entering the country illegally, including two young girls who crossed the border without their parents.
Some infants have been smuggled across the river with phone numbers written down on their clothes so that Border Patrol can contact the family and place the children in government custody until relatives can claim them in the U.S. The fact startled the senators unfamiliar with the common practice.
Over the current fiscal year, the number of unaccompanied children trended upward with about 14,700 children encountered by CBP along the southwest border in May, according to government data.
“This didn’t just happen,” Sen. Johnson said, pointing to a graphic tracking the rate of border encounters. The number of people crossing illegally into the country dipped drastically after April 2019, the data showed.
Republican senators credited policies and decisions taken by the Trump administration for the drop that continued through the end of Trump’s term.
“We know how to solve it. In 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency, we had the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years. We saw what works,” Cruz said.
Trump’s policies were fraught with legal challenges, however. Programs like the Migrant Protection Protocols, which sent migrants back to Mexico to await their U.S. court hearings, were appealed in courts for their conflicts with immigration law and its disregard of harm and death prompted in Mexico for migrants under the program.
The exclusively Republican visit held 500 miles south of the Democratic state convention this week was colored with overt political rhetoric challenging the current administration and actively campaigning for their party.
The visit spanned two days and the news conference was a steady stream of speeches lasting 35 minutes. Before wrapping up, reporters were told they would be allowed to ask questions but only two questions were taken before the senators departed from the meeting room. One outlet asked what they proposed as a solution.
“They could fix it tomorrow, they don’t want to,” Cruz said, ignoring the deadlock in the Senate and Congress to pass significant immigration reform.
Cruz continued his clearly partisan response just before the end of the conference.
“I believe the solution… “ he said, but moved to another thought, “I think November is going to be a red tidal wave. I think South Texas is going to turn red in November.”
