LAREDO, Texas — President Joe Biden and political allies need to stop sending messages that encourage the sending of children and underage teens from Central America into the hands of cartels, which oversee smuggling operations to the U.S., said Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) in a recent video interview.
“You ought to be sending the signal to stop sending your kids on the top of trains so the cartels and illicit organizations can abuse them,” Congressman Roy said–in what he referred to mixed messages sent by proponents of more relaxed border policies. Roy warns the trend only enriches Mexican cartels.
Roy recently visited a child detention center in Carrizo Springs and then toured the border zone in Laredo, Texas.
Roy argues that although detention facilities for underage migrants are widely vilified, the site he toured in Carrizo Springs was well-kept yet full.
“You can not like the way that process works but you are burying your head in the sand,” Roy said. “You have children now, what are you going to do with that child … how are you going to keep them safe?”
The current crisis has placed an undue burden on the U.S. Border Patrol that has removed agents from the field and turned them into caretakers at the much-vilified facilities, he said
“The facilities I’ve seen operated by Border Patrol, sometimes they are overwhelmed, they are Border Patrol, they are not supposed to be in the people management business,” Roy said.
The ongoing surge in the number of migrants entering the country has rapidly filled up detention centers, forcing FEMA to open new centers in Texas.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.