Exclusive — Sen. Steve Daines: Mexican Cartel Threatened Republican Senators from Across Rio Grande

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News on Monday that he and other Republican senators were “taunted” by Mexican cartel members during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas. He joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, to discuss his observations.

“We went right there at midnight [on Friday] to the Rio Grande River, and we were really taunted by Mexican cartel members,” Daines shared. “They didn’t know it was Republican senators who were staying there — literally on the water’s edge in the brush — but they knew it was probably Border Patrol. They could hear the English voices.

Daines continued, “We had Border Patrol who could translate what the cartel members were saying. It was vile. It was threatening. It was obscene, because they know they can have their way. They’re not afraid. They know they can make thousands of dollars per person that’s crossing right now. That’s what’s going on, right now.”

Marlow asked what the cartel members were saying.

“I can’t repeat it on the air,” Daines replied. “Our Border Patrol guys were saying that they were telling us to stick certain — it related to anatomy and other things. Let me just say that. It was absolutely vile, and it was horrible, and, ‘You can’t stop us,’ and so forth. They had these great big flashlights they shot back at us. This is what’s at stake. It’s lawlessness. They don’t care.”

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Daines remarked, “This is a human tragedy. These are children. As we went down the Rio Grande the next day  in the patrol boat with the big fully automatic weapons to protect our men and women who protect us on the border, we literally came across a body and retrieved [that came aground] just recently in the last 24 hours.”

“It was just like a day in the life here,” he stated. “Republican senators seeing it firsthand, seeing literally a dead body in the Rio Grande, somebody who had drowned.”

The Montana senator described transnational criminal cartels as financial beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s policies towards the southern border and immigration through human trafficking and drug smuggling.

“The cartels — these multi-billion dollar Mexican cartels — are raking in money by bringing these illegals across as well as the flood of the methamphetamines, the heroin, as well as the fentanyl. This is a 100 percent result of Joe Biden,” he said. “The winners here are the cartels.”

Marlow highlighted how Democrat policies towards the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration facilitate human smuggling operations conducted by criminal cartels south of the border.

He said, “The cartels typically have to buy off or intimidate [governments and citizens] with brutal murders. In America, we’re just enabling them because they help Democrats. It’s unbelievable. The cartels must be laughing hysterically at Americans because typically they have to actually work to try to get advantages for themselves. We just have Democrats come into power and now, all of a sudden, the cartels benefit immeasurably and they’re going to make millions — if not billions — of dollars off of us.”

Daines said the Border Patrol advised the President Joe Biden’s transition team to preserve some of the Trump administration’s border and immigration policies, specifically the Remain in Mexico policy. Apprehensions of foreign migrants crossing the southern border are now at a “20-year high,” he added.

“[The] Remain in Mexico policy [and] the safe third country agreement policies that Trump had put in place [had] virtually brought illegal crossings to a 40-year low in 2020, and now we’re looking at a 20-year high in 2021 as a result of a Biden’s policy.”

Migrant holding facilities are over filled beyond capacity, Daines warned.

“We went to the Donna facility there on the border,” he remarked. “[It is] like a massive tent city they created for this flood of illegals. By the way, when the illegals come across now, they put signs up and arrows on the ground that direct illegals where to go. They’re not running away from the Border Patrol. They want to be apprehended because of Joe Biden’s policies.”

He went on, “Biden’s policy allows them to be caught and then released. … So they’re not running away. They’re just basically throwing their arms up. They’ve got makeshift processing areas underneath bridges, right now. We saw these women, children, families that are in these makeshift processing facilities underneath bridges at night. They give them these little silver blankets to try to stay warm.”

“The Donna tense facility was designed to hold 1,000 people,” he added. “With COVID [coronavirus] restrictions, that’s 250. So 250 is the maximum capacity in this tent facility. When we went through there Friday morning, there were 4,200 illegals kept in there.”