Vulnerable Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) previously represented drug smugglers and gang leaders in his Texas-based law firm before running for Congress and stressing the need for “law and order,” a report alleges.
Gonzalez, who represents Texas’s 15th congressional district, which sits along the southern border, is facing a tough re-election bid in the 34th congressional district against Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX), who recently won the seat in a special election.
On his campaign site, Gonzalez touts his support for investments “in first responders at the community level” while “maintaining smart border security, increased security at our ports, and a more collaborative and accountable relationship with Mexico.”
Likewise, in June 2018, Gonzalez called himself a “law and order member” of Congress in addition to someone who “believe[s] in strict border security.” Again, in August 2018, he claimed to want to “bring security to our border” and ensure “drugs are not coming across as freely as they are now.”
Before his time in Congress, Gonzalez founded the V. Gonzalez and Associates law firm in 1997, which appears to still be operating and netting the lawmaker tens of thousands of dollars in income a year, the Washington Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports.
Gonzalez’s client list includes Richard Contreras, who pleaded guilty to federal drug charges after plotting to smuggle more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana from Mexico to the United States.
Similarly, in 1999, Gonzalez represented Frank Tijerina — the leader of the “Corrupt Criminal Mob,” a street gang in Texas — who was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison on federal drug charges for conspiring to distribute roughly $420,000 worth of marijuana. Tijerina also eventually pleaded guilty to selling large sums of meth dating back to 1990.
“In total, Gonzalez agreed to represent an array of felony drug dealers who conspired to distribute eight pounds of MDMA, nearly half a pound of cocaine, and more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, easily worth millions of dollars,” Free Beacon reports.
Gonzalez’s campaign did not return a request for comment to the Free Beacon, despite touting his record as an attorney.
The issue could end up haunting Gonzalez’s re-election campaign against Flores. During her short time in Congress, Flores has generated a lot of attention following first lady Jill Biden’s comparing Hispanic Americans to breakfast tacos.
In exclusive interviews with Breitbart Texas, Flores said, “[Democrats] want to send me back to Mexico,” referring to comments she has received from Democrats, and she called their attacks “hypocrisy.”
Hitting back against Mrs. Biden, Flores said, “[Democrats] think that with just their little face, people will vote for them … They think that because they hand out tacos, people will vote for them…People will no longer vote for them just because they hand out tacos or because they play music… And I think that they will realize in November.”
In Fiscal Year 2021, under President Joe Biden, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl and a 98 percent increase in cocaine in south Texas’s eight ports of entry.
DHS agents seized 41,713 pounds of marijuana, 8,592 pounds of cocaine, 33,777 pounds of methamphetamine, 1,215 pounds of heroin, 588 pounds of fentanyl, 463 weapons, and 84,863 rounds of ammunition in Fiscal Year 2021 under Biden.
The massive scale of drug seizures along the southern border in Texas comes as illegal immigration has skyrocketed on Biden’s watch. Gonzalez is currently campaigning on giving amnesty to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S., a plan likely to drive the record-setting illegal immigration numbers even higher.
From February 2021 to May 2022, Biden’s DHS has released over a million border crossers and illegal aliens into American communities — a foreign population twice that of Wyoming, larger than Austin, Texas, and twice the size of Atlanta, Georgia.
In a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, a majority of likely U.S. voters said they believe illegal immigration is continuing to get “worse” and 73 percent called immigration an important issue heading into the midterm elections.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.