Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district in southern Texas includes hundreds of miles of the U.S. border, said during an interview this week that he believes that Mexican drug cartels are dialing back their human smuggling operations ahead of the 2024 presidential election in an effort to help President Joe Biden.
After months of record-breaking numbers being posted every month for illegal border crossings on the U.S.-Mexico border, January’s numbers subsided, falling to around 128,410, which the administration tried to tout as a major victory since it was down substantially from the month before when more than 302,000 illegal aliens were encountered — the highest total in U.S. history.
However, it was still the highest January numbers ever recorded by the U.S. government, according to Gonzales.
“When you say border crossings are down, you’re talking about January being the most encounters ever,” Gonzales told Newsweek. “So, was it as bad as December? No, because that was [an] all-time, but it still was the worst January ever. So, that’s not good. It’s not good.”
“I do think the cartels are trying to carry the Biden administration a couple rounds,” he continued. “Mexico has an election in June that no one’s really tracking. And, I suspect, for the next couple of months, everything will be cleaned up a little bit. I mean, over 7,000 people a day is still astronomical.”
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd addressed the issue of Mexican drug cartels paying attention to U.S. politics and adjusting their operations accordingly.
Judd was asked if he expects another major surge of illegal aliens storming into the U.S. ahead of November due to the increasing likelihood that former President Donald Trump could be elected again.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
“We do,” Judd said. “We saw this back when President Trump was up for re-election again, we saw a huge surge expecting that Biden was going to win, they wanted to get here before Biden took office knowing that he was going to put policies in place that were going to protect them.”
“We see the cartels, they are very intelligent in everything that they do,” he continued. “They know what the ebbs and flows of our politics are. They know how to generate money based on what our politics are. They also understand what the media is reporting.”