Sunshine Sentinel

The border crisis is a national issue, affecting every town in the United States, according to a Florida congresswoman.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL), discussed immigration issues, the Biden administration’s handling of it, and what Americans can do during a livestream with Kevin Roberts, chief executive officer of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, on Monday, July 26.

Kathryn “Kat” Cammack, 33, is the youngest Republican woman in the 117th Congress and third-youngest woman elected in 2020, according to Wikipedia.

She was elected to represent the state's 3rd Congressional District after having served as the longtime deputy chief of staff to former Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), who fulfilled a campaign pledge by retiring after four terms.

Roberts described her as “one of the rising stars of the U.S. Congress" as well as one of the foundation's favorite members of Congress.

“Congresswoman Cammack has already, in her early tenure in Congress, distinguished herself as someone who's willing to tell the truth even when it ain't pretty,” he said.

She said the immigration crisis, with 200,000 people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border every month since March, keeps her up at night.

“There’s a whole host of issues that are critically important to our nation and to our communities,” Cammack said. “You can run through the list. There's election integrity, our Second Amendment rights, our First Amendment rights, state’s rights. And you look at the spending that's going on. But when it really comes down to the basics of protecting the sovereignty of the United States.”

She said the nation is without a secure border.

“The border issue has really become one of my top priorities, if not my top priority, because it is impacting every single town in America,” Cammack said. “And I tell people there's really three things that they need to take away from what's happening down there on the southwest border in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California. The big three that they need to know is, one, this is a crisis. This isn't seasonal. This is a full-blown crisis.”

She said was created by President Biden issuing executive orders and halting work on a border wall that exacerbated an already difficult situation. Biden and his team refuse to even admit the truth that this a crisis, Cammack said.

“The second thing that I tell people is every town in America is a border town. Full stop. ... It doesn't matter if you are in Maine, if you are in Virginia, if you're in Florida, if you are in Montana, every town in America is a border town.”

The third point is personal for her as her husband Matt Harrison, a Gainesville native, is a firefighter and SWAT medic for the Gainesville Fire Department, according to her website.

“He sees not only the drugs that are pouring into our community on a daily basis, the overdoses, the influx that we've seen in hard narcotics, fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines specifically” Cammack said. “We are seeing that uptick as a direct result of the border being open, but also as a SWAT medic, he's dealing with hardened criminals, gang members, cartel members, some of whom we've actually had encounters in my district in north-central Florida. ... If you care about law enforcement, if you back the blue, you cannot begin to protect your hometowns until you defend the homeland.”

She recently returned from the border, her third trip in her first few months as a member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Cammack brought along law enforcement leaders from her district. They saw evidence of “a public health crisis, a humanitarian crisis, the trafficking of kids, the drugs that are coming across the border, the national security concerns that they have, they're still processing what they saw,” she said.

The drugs smuggled across the border are killing Americans across the country, she said.

“And so they're seeing a tremendous amount of overdoses. And we're approaching 100 deaths in just one of my towns in my district as a direct result of what's happening in the border,” Cammack said.

Roberts said drugs, especially fentanyl, “which is just such a crisis right now for people of all age, is very likely in your town.” He said people need to hear that.

“This is not hyperbole from Texans,” Roberts said.

Cammack said it “pretty staggering … it's hard to even really wrap your head around the numbers.”

She said enough drugs are being seized to kill every man, woman and child in the state of Florida — a state with a population of almost 22 million — ten times over. What makes it worse is that law enforcement estimates only 20% of drugs brought to the border is seized.

“And they're being very creative in how they move the product. We've seen it in gas tanks,” Cammack said. “People will actually drive their cars across the border and it'll be in the gas tank mixed with the gas. It's just crazy how they do this.”

The people who are sneaking across the border often have criminal records, have previously been deported, are sex offenders, or they are smuggling drugs, she noted.

“And I'll just give you an example," Cammack said. "I was at the border on the Rio Grande Valley, which is a not great place to be right now ... lots of car chases, lots of shootouts, very dangerous. And it was about 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm standing there with Texas National Guard, Texas DPS and Border Patrol. And I watched for hours as two coyotes (smugglers), one of whom was an American, they were shuttling with a raft people over the river and dropping them off right in front of us.”

She said the law enforcement people she was with said they have “direct orders to facilitate and process” people illegally entering the country.

“And there was nothing that we could do because once they crossed the border in the river, not American soil, once they're there, the Border Patrol agents are helping process them,” the congresswoman said, her voice rising. “They are not allowed to search their bags. If they have backpacks or bags, they cannot touch what's in them. You could have God knows what, but 100 yards to your right and 100 yards to your left there, that's where the real nefarious actions happened, because little kids are the decoys.

“And I know that because one of the coyotes pulled a child and chuckled and said, ‘I'll throw the child in the river if you don't back up.’ So immediately, all of us are ready to go to try to save the kid. They're going to throw him in the river because they have no regard for life.”

Meanwhile, criminals and drugs flow into the United States, and not just from Mexico, Central America or South America, she added.

“We have over 140 nationalities at the southwest border,” Cammack said. “Romania in the month of June was the most apprehended nationality coming across the southwest border." 

There’s also a spike in COVID-19 cases with the people stationed at the border, El Paso Times reported.

“We lost an agent of 20, 30 years just last week to COVID infection,” she said. “We have 13 agents that are sick in the hospital. Two or three are in the ICU because of their exposure to illegals that have no tests. Certainly they're not vaccinated.

“We don't have the resources to test everyone coming across from COVID," she added. "Really, really scary that our agents are not only being put in harm's way from the criminal element, but now they're in extreme danger from all the variants, the delta that's coming across. And, of course, they're endangering their communities and their families because they're going home.”

The freshman congresswoman said she has been to the border three times and talked with many people.

“I’ve seen a lot when I've been down there. I've heard from a tremendous amount of people,” she said. “Not once have I encountered Joe Biden.”

She has had a pair of “contentious exchanges” with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Cammack said she doubts Mayorkas' interest in the issue and commitment to the men and women serving at the border. She noted that when he came to Texas, he didn’t meet with law enforcement officials on their turf at the border but had them come to an airport to talk with him.

Cammack said she suspects Democrats want to bring in more people to register and vote. She noted House Resolution 1 would remove a requirement for voters to show ID, even though most Americans have to show it to buy liquor, board an airplane or do many other things. People who are being processed at the border and sent to live in cities and towns across the border are exempt from that.

“I think the border situation fits into the bigger plan, which really is control and dependency,” she said. “Those two things mean power for the left and the ultra-liberal left agenda. And that’s what the left wants. They want big government because people are dependent on it.”

Cammack was asked what ordinary Americans can do. 

“It's so critical is use your social media in your network for a couple of reasons,” she said. “One, share information that folks are putting out. Homeland Security Committee puts out a lot of really good information. It’s current, up to date, it's vetted, it's fact-checked. Share that and put it across all your platforms and encourage your friends, your colleagues, your family to share that information because the mainstream media isn't covering this. So that's the first part, become a sharing machine.”

Cammack also advised people to flag Facebook posts that offer assistance to people seeking to enter the United States illegally. She said she has battled with Facebook about this, since many people stopped at the border said they made arrangements through the social media titan.

“I actually spoke with a 16-year-old girl who had come from Honduras. And I asked her, where are you from? How did you know to come here?” Cammack said. “And she said, Facebook. And that was the first time I had heard that as I went down the line talking to these people who had just crossed the border, they all said Facebook. They said, I got an ad on Facebook. I contacted the group page. And then we arrange payment and logistics through Facebook.”

She said Facebook officials said they didn’t have enough staff to monitor all the pages on their site. People can flag pages and posts to help them be taken down.

She also called on state legislators in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California to institute criminal trespassing penalties for people coming across the border.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas.