Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz blasted President Joe Biden’s updated National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, challenging him to start with the nation’s southern border.
“How ‘bout secure the damn border?” Cruz tweeted in response to the anti-trafficking effort.
How ‘bout secure the damn border? https://t.co/8rM8QIyAlb
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 8, 2021
Biden’s plan to combat human trafficking includes a “new focus on gender and racial equity and workers’ rights,” according to The Hill.
“Human trafficking is a stain on our society’s conscience and an affront to the ideals that form the basis of our national strength: liberty, justice, equality, and opportunity,” Biden said in a statement on Friday, according to the report.
While combating human trafficking remains an important priority, an area of high risk of trafficking in the U.S. is the southern border.
In November, Cruz questioned Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
During his first round of questioning, “Mayorkas could not provide data on the conditions in immigration detention facilities, the crime caused by dangerous human trafficking, or how many COVID-positive illegal aliens the Biden administration has released into the United States. In his second round of questioning, Sec. Mayorkas refused to answer for the Biden administration’s proposed policy of paying illegal immigrants,” according to the senator’s press release.
Cruz commented on the discussion during an interview with Sean Hannity after the hearing:
“So I asked Secretary Mayorkas, ‘How many kids have been put in the Biden cages?’ He didn’t know. I asked him, ‘How many people coming here illegally have died, had been abandoned to die in the desert by the coyotes?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I asked him, ‘How many women being trafficked in by human traffickers have been sexually assaulted?’ He said, ‘I didn’t know.’ I asked him, ‘How many of the children, of the over 100,000 children that are brought in by human traffickers, how many of them have been sexually assaulted?’ He said he didn’t know.
Cruz claimed the Biden administration is intentionally allowing human trafficking and other nefarious practices to continue:
I’ve got to tell you, in Texas, we’re paying the price. When I’m down on the border, when I’m talking to farmers and ranchers and sheriffs and law enforcement, they are fed up. They are fed up with the crime, with the disease, with the poverty. It is overwhelming the State of Texas, and this administration is creating this lawlessness, and they’re doing it deliberately.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, migrants from more than 100 countries illegally entered the country in the past Fiscal Year just in one sector of Texas.
Del Rio Sector agents recently apprehended migrants that included two men from Syria, one man from Lebanon, and one man from Tajikistan.
“We encounter individuals from all over the world attempting to illegally enter our country,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens said in a media release. “Our agents are focused and work hard to ensure that we detect, arrest, and identify anyone that enters our country in order to maintain safety of our communities.”
The past Fiscal Year, covering October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021, included encounters in the Del Rio Sector from 106 countries, according to the media release.
In October, a total of 28,111 undocumented migrants from 50 countries were reported in the sector.