Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Friday said he witnessed migrants attempting to cross over the porous southern border wearing wristbands that indicate how much money they owe the infamous drug cartels.
Cruz visited the U.S.-Mexico border and surrounding areas last week, along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and other colleagues. The former presidential contender described what they witnessed as an “absolute disaster,” “inhumane,” and “horrific,” slamming the Biden administration for apparent refusal to act and save lives.
Migrants are wearing different colored wristbands to represent how many thousands of dollars they owe the drug cartels, Cruz said at a press conference on Friday.
“We saw dozens of wristbands, colored wristbands, that the cartels put on the illegal immigrants to mark how many thousands of dollars those children owe the cartels, to ensure that those kids keep working for the cartels for years to come,” he said.
Reuters first reported on the color-coded wristbands in 2021. The report said the bands were widely used by powerful cartels and smugglers to track migrants paying money to illegally cross into the U.S. The bands were promptly ripped off after migrants successfully crossed over the border illegally, agents reportedly witnessed.
Matthew Dyman, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told Reuters that the “information on the bracelets represents a multitude of data that is used by smuggling organizations, such as payment status or affiliation with smuggling groups.”
Cruz, on Friday, also described the horror of so-called “rape trees,” something he said he learned about for the first time.
“The traffickers would violently rape young women and then hang their undergarments in the tree as a trophy, mocking law enforcement that there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Cruz said, as first reported by JustTheNews.
“There is something we can do to stop it: we can enforce the damn law,” he emphasized.
“Where are the Democrats?” Cruz pressed the media, adding that the reason President Joe Biden won’t visit the border is because he “knows if he comes, the TV cameras will follow, and their hope is to hide the human suffering.”
“The Joe Biden body bags keep piling up,” Cruz slammed.
Cruz on July 12 announced his visit to the Rio Grande Valley, intending to “survey the current state” of the Southern border.
“Texans are the front line of our border crisis,” the senator said. “Our communities suffer from the rampant influx of drugs and illegal immigration, and we suffer from the crime that accompanies it.”
“We must do more as a country to secure our borders, but at the very least we cannot backslide by removing the current Remain in Mexico policy that is helping our Border Patrol agents manage the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming to the border every month,” he continued.
“And it’s not just a humanitarian and drug crisis – there are documented cases of convicted criminals and suspected terrorists trying to exploit our open border,” the senator added. “For Americans to have real confidence in our government’s ability to keep our nation safe, we need to see a secure southern border. As we visit the brave men and women of the Border Patrol next week, we hope to gain further insight into what steps we as elected legislators can take to secure our border and secure our communities.”
Cornyn said the crisis “is not getting better because the Biden Administration is simply not enforcing the law.”
“The sheer numbers of people coming across the border are keeping the Border Patrol from their primary job, which allows drug cartels to move illicit drugs that kill thousands of Americans every year,” Cornyn added.
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