U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA-01) traveled with former U.S. President Donald Trump to the U.S.-Mexico border last week and said he saw “the opposite of progress.”
“When Vice President Kamala Harris claimed the Biden Administration ‘made progress’ during [her] visit to our southern border last week, I was intrigued. I was appalled by what I saw when I visited the border in May and hopeful that the Biden Administration was finally taking this situation seriously,” Carter told his constituents in an emailed newsletter Sunday.
“That’s why I gladly accepted an invitation to return to the border with President Donald J. Trump. Unlike Vice President Harris who visited El Paso, we [went to] McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley which is the very epicenter of the crisis.”
The month of May, Carter said, marked a 21-year high of encounters with 180,034 illegal immigrants apprehended. Authorities, he added, have seized enough fentanyl this year to kill every American four times over.
“Cartels are making record profits with $14 million per day alone for human trafficking. Vice President Harris and President Biden have no one to thank but themselves. The presidents of Guatemala and Mexico have both cited their soft talk on immigration as a magnet for migrants,” Carter said.
“Halting construction of the border wall and repealing successful Trump-era policies such as ‘Remain in Mexico’ and weakening the Title 42 public health ruling have only made things worse. This is not just a national security crisis and a humanitarian crisis; it is a national embarrassment. We must put politics aside and come together to make it right.”
Carter visited the U.S.-Mexico border in April and described “a complete and total disaster” that threatens national security. He toured U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services facilities in Brownsville, Donna, and McAllen, Texas.
Carter said at the time that coyotes — people who smuggle illegal immigrants across the U.S. border, typically for a high fee — are successfully diverting attention at the border. Agents thus have to move away from critical border security needs to tend to humanitarian positions for which they have not trained.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Trump at the Southern Border” by OfficialTeamTump and “Rep Cuddy Carter” is by Rep Buddy Carter.
