Report: Migrants Hoping They'd Be Welcomed by Biden Kidnapped and Held for Ransom in Texas, Cops Rescue Them
If this isn’t evidence of a crisis at the border, I don’t know what is.
Twelve migrants were rescued by the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday morning after being smuggled into the country and held for ransom by coyotes, according to the New York Post.
The Post reportedly witnessed the 5 a.m. rescue during a ride-along. Reporters accompanied local law enforcement working with U.S. Border Patrol in Operation Stonegarden, a federal grant program providing funding to local units to assist in “border security measures.”
One immigrant, an Ecuador native named Elizabeth Carrillo, told the Post she “arrived here bleeding without clothes, very hurt, but this is something that we do for our children and for our family.
“We almost died in the [Rio Grande] when we crossed.”
Cops were dispatched to the scene after Carrillo contacted relatives in New Jersey who relayed to the sheriff’s office that she and other migrants were being held at gunpoint “by two men.” The men reportedly refused to let the migrants leave without being paid in advance, and threatened to “do something” to Carrillo and her daughter if Carrillo “said anything.”
Her story is one of tens of thousands in the leading months of the 2021 fiscal year. Migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central and Latin American countries continue to flood the border in record numbers as President Joe Biden continues to relax the federal immigration policy his predecessor put into place.
In just two months, the Biden administration has rolled back multiple Trump-era immigration regulations, including the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers and other immigrants to be returned to Mexico during processing, and stopping construction on the border wall.
Combined with the announcement Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security would be propping up new facilities for families and unaccompanied children illegally crossing the border, it’s no wonder immigrants feel welcomed by the president.
The migrants rescued by the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office told the Post as much. As Carrillo waited for Border Patrol to pick her and the others up, she explained “They said that Biden was going to help the people.”
“My purpose was to come here with my family, work for five years and to go back and be with my daughter,” she continued. “I only wanted to work to give my daughter a future. I never thought that it was like this.”
Her sentiment is carried by others, like Juana Débora Jiménez, a 33-year-old Guatemalan migrant.
“I came because [Biden] has more heart,” she told the Post in tears. “He is the president that could help us. He cares more about us than the other one, and I thought he would see our necessity and help us. Our own president doesn’t care about us.”
She reportedly asked Biden to “help us,” hoping the president would see immigrants are coming to America for work.
The president, in contrast, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he could “quite clearly” tell immigrants to not come to the border, likely breaking the hearts of the groups of migrants seen on camera wearing Biden-Harris T-shirts from the 2020 presidential campaign.
“I can say quite clearly don’t come over,” Biden told migrants amid a border surge https://t.co/nVl1jCwiK5 pic.twitter.com/yO0bKk2hWX
— The Hill (@thehill) March 16, 2021
This is what Biden’s immigration policies are doing to the border.
Regardless of how often or how harshly the president will tell immigrants to not come to the border, his policies do not reflect his rhetoric.
Allowing his administration to remove Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operatives and other border security personnel from the front lines while leaving miles-wide holes in existing border fencing free for drug cartels and human traffickers to travel through and allowing unaccompanied minors by the thousands into the country does not say “don’t come.”
It says the exact opposite.
If there were a time better suited to address and act on the existing border crisis, I would be hard-pressed to find one.
As it stands, the current administration has dumped over 100 COVID-positive illegal immigrants into one Texas border city, forced New Mexico ranchers and their families to fend for themselves as border patrol lacks funding to do its job and Texas bar owners are finding immigrants hiding on their patios, bathrooms and trucks.
The 2021 fiscal year is also shaping up to be the busiest at the border since 2019. According to Customs and Border Protection, 100,441 enforcement encounters took place along the southwest border in February alone. Comparatively, February 2019 saw 76,545 encounters, an increase of over 30 percent between 2019 and 2021.
This is the crisis our country, and specifically our border communities, are facing, and President Biden created it.
The very least he can do is acknowledge it and develop a plan to fight it.
Did you know that The Western Journal now publishes some content in Spanish as well as English, for international audiences? Click here to read this article on The Western Journal en Español!
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