Texas officials and activists traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to testify before the Georgia Senate’s Committee on Interstate Cooperation and requested resources to combat the ongoing southwest border invasion.
“There is not a terrorist organization in the world responsible for killing 100,000 Americans,” said Jaeson Jones, an expert on Mexican cartels and retired Texas Department of Public Safety captain. “They have weaponized fentanyl in Mexico and then push that poison into this country. … And the reason I’m here today is to get these cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations so that we can absolutely crush them for what they have done to Americans, what they have done to Mexican citizens, and what they have done to so many migrants crossing through Mexico.”
Jones added, “What we are facing is unprecedented. The transnational crime impacts on this country are not being measured. They [cartels] are a true parallel government of Mexico today.”
“To keep our nation safe, I’ve filed legislation to build a border wall,” explained State Rep. Bryan Slaton (R–Royse City).
Slaton asked Georgia to consider donating money to help fund the construction of the border wall, saying, “There are people all over the country that understand what’s happening and understand how important it is that we solve this problem.”
Chris Russo, president of Texans for Strong Borders, said, “These illegal aliens are not primarily political asylees or refugees. They’re economic migrants seeking access to the greater economic opportunity and stability afforded by the United States. … In order to cross the southern border, they are forced to enter into agreements with cartel-affiliated human smugglers or enter into drug trafficking or debt slavery agreements.
“Many of them are sexually assaulted, threatened with violence, or die due to exposure and mistreatment. This is not merely illegal immigration. … These cartels have operational control and operate as a parallel government, and that’s why we call it an invasion. It’s well organized.”
As Texans are faced with the consequences of the Biden administration’s open borders policy, county officials from Texas related the crisis to the Georgia senators and requested any help possible.
“Terrell County is known for being the cactus capital of Texas for a reason,” explained Terrell County Judge Dale Lynn Carruthers. “It is rugged, the brush is very dangerous, and people do perish out there.”
“We’re undermanned,” said Carruthers. With 91 miles of Texas-Mexico border, Terrell County consists of more than 2,300 square miles of land and fewer than 1,000 people.
“What we get in our community is not the people that are family units, because I’m directly in between two ports of entry. So, what we get in my county are high-speed pursuits,” explained Carruthers. “They come across the country at night, they cross our ranches, and they destroy a lot of property.”
With damage including broken water lines, busted fences, trash everywhere, and escaped livestock, Carruthers said the costs are adding up. “We have to constantly put the money in to repair this,” said Carruthers. “We’re not getting reimbursed for that. … These ranchers and farmers are being exploited.”
Carruthers even described a recent incident where two innocent men were killed in a head-on collision with two illegal aliens (one died and the other had to be life-flighted out). Between high-speed pursuits through main traffic centers to hours-long rides out into the brush to retrieve bodies or illegals abandoned by their smugglers, Carruthers said, “We’re dealing with it every day.”
“Any men out there is support,” she told the Georgia senators. “Anything that you can get in West Texas is a blessing. You know, even if it were medical support, your paramedics, whatever it takes. We need help out there.”
“What we’re dealing with is a shortage of anything,” said Carruthers.
“I don’t believe us Texans would be here if it wasn’t a dire situation,” confirmed Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith.
However, in the past two years, Kinney County went from prosecuting 60 misdemeanor cases a year to 6,000. Similarly, the county prosecuted 67 felony cases for human smuggling in 2020; since then, more than 3,000 such cases have been prosecuted.
Smith explained:
I saw an increase in numbers that couldn’t be explained by a normal increase in crime. Our streets are overrun. Our citizens are constantly being put in danger. We’ve had assaults, we’ve had I don’t know how many car deaths. And this is all from a county [of] about 3,000 people. We have prosecuted more than the population of the entire county.
This is a crisis not only for the county, but for the rest of Texas and the nation. But make no mistake, the cartels control both sides of the border of the United States—not just Texas, but of the United States—and they control far more than just the borders. They are in every major city in this nation. I guarantee you that.
Smith says that although it’s the federal government’s job to protect U.S. borders, “the states, when they joined the union, did not sign a death pact, a suicide pact.”
“If our borders cannot be controlled or secured, Article I of the U.S. Constitution provides the states the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ way to secure their own borders,” added Smith.
Indeed, the Center for Renewing America has laid out a step-by-step plan to stop the invasion at the Texas-Mexico border and secure the state using Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which allows the states to militarize and protect themselves.
“Anyone that thinks that Joe Biden will fix this crisis at this point is foolish,” said Smith. “And that’s not a party issue; that is a fact.”
Sheriff Roy Boyd of Goliad County said, “I will tell you that never in history has there ever been anything like this on the border. What we deal with now is something completely different—something completely, far more evil. And what it is is slave trade. I keep hearing the word ‘immigration.’ There is no free immigration across the border with Mexico. It is slave trade, because very few people can make it across that border without paying their due to the cartel.”
Goliad County is more than 100 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border but is located on the route from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston, which human smugglers have been using for years.
“Anybody who comes across and does not pay will either be tortured or killed,” said Boyd. Those who do pay the cartels are “taken across the border, they’re put into stash houses, they’re broken up. They’re transferred to Houston, which is the No. 1 hub of slave trade in the United States.”
Boyd explained:
Those people think that when they cross that border, they’re going to be free. But when the cartel gets them to Houston, they’re told, “Congratulations, you owe another $10,000.” And if you can’t pay, which none of them are going to be able to pay, and your family can’t pay, which they’re not going to be able to pay because they’ve probably spent their entire life savings to get those folks this far, then those individuals are then put into bondage here in the United States. They’re indentured servants, they’re slaves, and they are held throughout the United States paying off the cartels.
“This is a fight against good and evil, because the cartels control far more than you realize, even here in the United States,” added Boyd.
Boyd advises that the U.S. hit Mexico where it hurts: their pocketbooks.
“The thing about it is the Mexican government makes a ton of money off of their partnership with the cartels because they work together. The only way to bring this to an end, quite honestly, is to create enough economic pain in Mexico from the loss of legitimate revenue to outweigh the money they gain with their illegitimate revenue,” said Boyd.
“We must bring this to an end. And the only way to do that is to understand that Mexico is not an ally of the United States. It is a nation that works against us on many levels, and we’re going to have to treat them that way.”
Forty-three Texas counties have already declared an invasion, calling on the state to take additional measures as the federal government fails to protect Texas. By using the powers of office constitutionally allocated to the governor, Gov. Greg Abbott can secure the state’s sovereign borders himself in the absence of federal action.
It would also allow the governor to request further assistance from other states—including Georgia—in the form of manpower, money, and desperately needed resources.
Concerned citizens can contact the governor’s office to voice their opinions on the issue.
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