If President Joe Biden wonât let the Border Patrol fix the Border crisis, maybe itâs time that their wives step into the fray.
Not as agents, mind you. No, Irene Armendariz-Jackson, Mayra Flores and Cassy Garcia have a different idea.
All three Hispanic women, all married to Border Patrol agents, are running as Republicans in border districts against Democrats who have, to varying extents, enabled the administrationâs lax border policies.
As the Washington Examinerâs Anna Giaritelli put it, the three Texas candidates are âdetermined to give a voice to the 20,000 federal law enforcement agents who have apprehended illegal immigrants 3.6 million times since President Joe Biden took office.â
At least one of the Border Patrol wives has already gotten into Congress: Flores, who won a special election in Texasâs 34th Congressional District earlier this year. She will encounter a tougher challenge in November, however, when she faces Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr., whoâs running against her due to redistricting.
According to Ballotpedia, the newly drawn district would have gone heavily to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, with the president taking over 57 percent of the vote.
However, Flores managed to win the special election by tapping into Latino frustration with Democrats, including on Illegal immigration. In the general election, sheâs continued to hammer Democrats on Border security.
âWe have a border that is completely out of control,â Flores said, according to the Examiner.
âItâs not just a humanitarian crisis. Itâs also a national security crisis. ⌠Our Border Patrol are focused on women and children. Theyâre not able to focus on the terrorists coming in,â she said.
Garcia, meanwhile, beat out six other Republicans to get a shot at replacing Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, a fixture in Congress since 2005.
Cuellar â whose expansive district stretches from the border in Laredo to the city of San Antonio â has occasionally made token protests against unfettered Illegal immigration. However, heâs been a vigorous opponent of any kind of border fence.
In 2017, he criticized then-President Donald Trump for threatening a government shutdown to âbuild his symbolic border wallâ and said Trump âwants to punish the American people.â
âPresident Trump should be leading the nation, and encouraging investment in Border security measures that actually work,â Cuellar said.
Yes, and that would have been a border wall. The fact it wasnât built has made life considerably harder for agents like Garciaâs husband, who has served with the Border Patrol for 26 years.
âThe support theyâre not receiving from the administration â itâs unbelievable,â said Garcia, a former aid to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.
The Republican candidate also mocked the administrationâs attempts to deal with Illegal immigration by assigning Vice President Kamala Harris the task of investigating the âroot causesâ of unlawful migration.
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âI think sheâs still trying to figure out the root causes, right? We know what the root causes are, right? Theyâre not enforcing laws,â Garcia said, according to the Examiner.
As for Armendariz-Jackson, her husband retired from the Border Patrol after 24 years because he refused to comply with the Biden administrationâs COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
âDue to Bidenâs tyrannical vaccine mandate, he has had to take an early retirement. He has served El Paso & America well â he truly loved his job. This is a sad day for our family,â she said in a December 2021 tweet thread.
âMy husband was lucky enough to be able to take an early retirement, but many are simply having to quit. It is wrong & pitiful,â Armendariz-Jackson continued.
âWhat we inject into our bodies is our choice. This is a major part of why Iâm running for Congress in Texasâs 16th district. Our country deserves better than this. The men and women who served us at & in the armed forces deserve better.â
Armendariz-Jackson left her job as a real estate agent to challenge Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar. She replaced Beto OâRourke after the then-representative embarked on a lifeâs journey to serially lose every higher office he could possibly run for.
While Escobar hasnât engaged in some of Betoâs more grating habits â such as livestreaming his dental appointments to seem hip to the kiddies â sheâs no better on policy issues, particularly Illegal immigration.
Escobar, who once cosponsored legislation that would have decriminalized illegal border crossings, has repeatedly clashed with GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over his response to the Border crisis.
According to The Texan, Escobar called Abbottâs mobilization of the Texas Department of Public Safety and National Guard to the border in July âunconstitutional, dangerous, and irresponsibleâ and instead suggested that âncreasing legal pathways will help mitigate some human trafficking.â
In short, any of these three Republican women would be marked improvements over their rivals.
For the first time ever, arrests of illegal immigrants trying to cross at the nationâs southern border â euphemistically referred to by the sterile term âencountersâ â has reached 2 million so far this fiscal year, according to the New York Post. And those, mind you, are the ones who were caught.
The Democrats donât want a wall, they donât law enforcement mobilized to deal with the crisis and they certainly donât want to support the Border Patrol.
Thereâs only so much individual agents can do. Their wives, however, might be able to do a great deal more â if they get elected.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
