Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) was overcome with emotion while speaking this week about the horrors he witnessed at the southern border.
Owens spoke of the struggles he witnessed of children, including one young girl who no longer speaks because she was allegedly gang-raped. The former NFL star blasted the “complicit media” and the Biden-Harris administration for neglecting to see those suffering as “humans,” but as a political “strategy.”
“It breaks my heart to see these young people, sitting on the floor … These —,” Owens started to say as he was overcome with emotion. “I have 15 grandkids; I have one autistic grandson. To see these young babies sitting on the floor — to see this one young girl, autistic, seven-years-old, and the entire time we’re there, she had tears in her eyes the entire time.”
“And we have people in D.C. who couldn’t care less when they see a three and five-year-old girl dropped from a fourteen-foot high wall, when they see a nine-year-old young boy abandoned,” he continued.
“I heard a story last night,” Owens recalled. A young girl, he said, cannot speak anymore because of the trauma she faced while being gang-raped. “These are the stories that we’re not being told. And we have a complicit media, who refuses to talk about this journey, this magnet, of these young girls and boys — many will not make it, many will never talk to their parents again … because we have an administration that does not look at these people as people, but as a strategy.”
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Owens made similar comments this week in Texas following his border visit, emphasizing his disgust for the Biden-Harris administration.
“To President Biden and Vice President Harris: Get some backbone,” he blasted the Democrats, according to Fox News. “Get some compassion. Come down to the border and see what mess you’ve made.”
“Whether you’re American or Mexican or Guatemalan, it doesn’t matter,” the Republican continued. “These are our children. And we have an administration that does not have the backbone to come down here and give encouragement to these great men and women (U.S. Border Patrol agents) who are doing the job and are being overwhelmed right now.”
Outstanding speech today by @BurgessOwens pic.twitter.com/63Gp5CPdOM
— Jake Bequette (@JakeBequette91) April 8, 2021
A crisis at the southern border has exploded under President Joe Biden. As noted by The Daily Wire, the president quickly moved to do away with Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which held foreigners who tried to enter the U.S. illegally in camps in Mexico while they awaited hearings. Biden, instead, returned to the so-called “catch-and-release” policy in which illegal migrants are allowed to enter the U.S.
Earlier this month, secretly recorded video obtained by Project Veritas reportedly showed migrants, including children, being held under a bridge in a “makeshift” processing center for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).
According to a report from the undercover journalist group, an insider secretly recorded footage under the Anzalduas International Bridge “in an effort to illustrate the inhumane conditions illegal immigrants — many of them minors – face while in custody.”