EXCLUSIVE: Biden’s ‘Open Border’ Enriches Mexican Cartels and Needs Reforms, Rep. Mayra Flores Says

Congresswoman Mayra Flores (R-TX) wants to defund Mexican cartels by removing some of their primary revenue sources: human smuggling and trafficking.

“What we have now is practically an open border,” she said. “They don’t want to call it that, but when you allow everyone to come in and claim asylum knowing that 80 percent don’t have a legitimate claim, you created an open border.”

“This shouldn’t be political,” Rep. Flores said during an interview with Breitbart Texas. “Wanting to keep children safe, wanting to keep women safe from the abuse and the horrors they suffer at the hands of cartel smugglers should not be political. This is something we should all agree on. When did this become political?”

Flores’s border congressional district (TX-34) is strongly affected by current policies.

“It is time we defund the cartels,” the congresswoman said. “The only way is by focusing on legal immigration … This country needs serious immigration reform and strong border security, which I’m going to work on.”

With a simplified immigration system, the money that migrants pay cartels to be smuggled into the country illegally would go instead to the U.S. in the form of fees, Flores said, adding that reform is needed since migrants who try to enter the country legally have to hire attorneys, spend thousands of dollars, and wait through government bureaucracy.

The current system’s complexity pushes migrants to cartel-connected human smuggling organizations, she said.

“It is heartbreaking to see this humanitarian crisis,” the congresswoman said, adding that most migrants experience abuse at the hands of their smugglers on both sides of the border.
Flores said the country needs serious reform with strong border security measures.

The record-setting number of asylum claims has created a substantial backlog, which mainly hurts those with legitimate asylum claims, the congresswoman said.