Rep.Tony Gonzales (R-TX) On Border Czar Kamala: “She Completely Failed”

Listen Below:

BENSON: Joining us now is Congressman Tony Gonzalez, a Republican from the 23rd Congressional District in the great state of Texas. Congressman, welcome back to the airwaves.

GONZALES: Hey, Guy. Thanks for having me back on.

BENSON: I want to talk about immigration mostly with you. But before we get to that, this clip has been making the rounds, and I want you to hear it. This is Vice President Kamala Harris, who was touting Biden not long ago. Cut 27.

VO: All that, ladies and gentlemen and everyone else that is calmed by dynamics. That is called. Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics.

BENSON: We are very proud of Bidenomics. We have a president 20 plus points underwater on the economy. The Vice President was there every step of the way, in many cases urging for more spending. That led to the record inflation that we saw, at least modern record inflation, during this presidency. And now, like the hangover has arrived on inflation with prices 20% higher than they were when Harris and Biden took office. And now you’ve heard the word recession flying around. I’m not sure if people on Capitol Hill are worried about it, but clearly investors are and American voters are.

GONZALES: We are worried about a guy. And this is one of the things that we have to do is we have to highlight their failed policies not only on the border and security and safety, but also economics, you know, they have failed time and time again. It’s not only the spending, it’s what they’re spending things on. You know, this, you know, we’re going to we’re going to pay back your college debt. You know, we’re going to throw these free money. We’re going to give all these countries just these endless resources. This is the part where people have had enough and they should own it. Republicans should hold them accountable. And we should we should highlight. Is your life better off than it was four years ago? I think for the majority of Americans, they will say it’s not, especially when it comes to economics.

BENSON: So Kamala Harris may, maybe disavow any knowledge or responsibility for Bidenomics at some point here because she’s running away from basically every position she’s ever taken. She’s also run completely away from the title of border Czar. Which is one that she had she was the point person on immigration in the border for the administration, colloquially known as Border Czar And because that has gone very poorly and now she’s the candidate, a bunch of people are saying, oh, no, she was never the border Czar, you know, better. You represent a huge border district. She was the point person. She’s failed because she really couldn’t even pretend to care about this issue. And the result is 10 million illegal crossings.

GONZALES : She was the point person on the border as the Vice President and completely failed. They tried for about ten minutes. You know, this root causes. They rolled out this plan. She visited one time to Central America, had this idea of of of attracting corporations and jobs out there so people wouldn’t travel here. Not a new idea. And then they gave up on it. I mean, that’s not how you solve a big problem. And you’re seeing across the world, you know, what happened in Bangladesh, what’s happening in Venezuela, what’s happening in Israel, what happened in Iran. The world is is what’s happening in Ukraine. I mean, the world is very unstable right now, and we need a United States with a steady hand. We need someone there that’s going to get the job done, not run from it. Not not blame it on somebody else. As a leader, sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t. You have to have responsibility for your own actions. It’s very clear. Vice President Kamala Harris has just done absolutely nothing but fail after fail.

BENSON: Well, and their policies open these floodgates. It’s funny. It’s actually, if it weren’t so frustrating and insulting, it would be funny to see how they’re now trying to take credit for a significant downtick in illegal border crossings. Right? That they told us for a long time, they did not have any more authority to to sort of flood into this issue. They’ve done everything they possibly can, which was a lie, an absolute lie the whole time, because they could have just simply undone the terrible executive actions that they took as soon as Donald Trump left office. But they swore up and down, we have exhausted our executive authority. Congress must act, and the Republicans are unwilling to compromise with us. That was their talking point. And now here we are, months away from a general election and this is a huge vulnerability for their party in their ticket, especially with the border Czar are now at the top of the ticket. And wouldn’t you know what, they found some authority a couple weeks ago and they’ve been suing your state of Texas. We had Governor Abbott here recently. He was pointing out we have put in a bunch of measures that have drastically cut down illegal border crossings in the state of Texas. Biden and Harris sued them at every step. Right. They have been trying to block in the courts successful measures to put an end to the success that Texas is having and then at the same time, they want to take credit for the success that Texas is having. And I saw it just a few days ago, Congressman, they have now frozen those controversial migrant flights, which at first they denied. Now they’re frozen, I would imagine probably till around November 6th. That would be my guess. It’s just this, this totally incoherent and deeply intellectually dishonest political game that they’ve been playing.

GONZALES: It is. And it’s dangerous. I mean, literally, Americans are being killed all over the country because we’re not safe. It’s not only the the amount of people that are coming over. It’s the type of people that are coming over. You have to vet things. And I’m a I’m a proponent of legal immigration. I pushed very hard to separate illegal immigration from illegal immigration. They’ve failed at everything legal, illegal, all of it. I don’t, I take it a step further, too, though. It’s not just the administration, you know. I know Mark Kelly is in the running for VP, and nominee, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow morning. But what what is he done? You know, as the senator from Arizona, what has he done to make his state any more safe? It’s not just about what the administration has done. House Republicans have had to fight the administration at every at every corner. You mentioned Governor Abbott, you know, the state of Texas. We’ve had a fight. The administration every corner. You can’t just sit back and go, oh, we’re just going to allow the administration to continue to do this. Because what I’ve been hearing, I recently met with, with some leadership in ICE, and we sit down, I go, look, I know the numbers are going to get down. July is always really hot. That’s part of it as well. It’s kind of a cycle. He goes, look, I expect after after July the numbers are going to skyrocket it up for two reasons. He goes one, the one the temperature. Two politics. Meaning this meaning the closer we get to November, the more these criminal organizations are going to go now is our last bite at the apple, and they’re going to sell that to people. And so I suspect we’re not they’re not done with they may take their victory lap today, but but they’re very soon they’re going to have to own this border crisis. They already have it.

BENSON: Yeah. 10 million crossings. Right. And they’re they’re kind of bringing it down a bit right before an election. But yeah, I could imagine the cartels saying, hey, guess what? If you want to come in and you want to be able to stay, you want to do it now, because if Trump wins, the party’s over. That’s going to be almost certainly part of the messaging to illegal immigrants. And I saw that you had tweeted just recently through your office account that in your conversations that you’ve had looking at the official stats, the Biden-Harris. Administration, I’m quoting you here, has failed to remove 99.7% of illegal immigrants released into the United States. So deportation is just not a thing, right? If you if you get here and you’re allowed in, which millions and millions and millions of people have done under Biden-Harris with a tiny handful of exceptions, you get to stay even if you commit and are convicted of certain lower level crimes, you get to stay. They are not deporting anyone 99.7% failure to remove rate. That is a very clear message to illegal immigrants and would be illegal immigrants. If you come to the United States, there is a nearly 100% chance. Once you released into the interior, you’re not going anywhere.

GONZALES : That’s right. This. And this is exactly what they want. I’ll remind your audience it was June of 2021. It’s Vice President Harris, along with Secretary Mayorkas and, Veronica Escobar, one of the local, congresswoman from El Paso, there at the airport where she says, welcome to the new Ellis Island. I mean, this is what they want. And, you know, what’s terrible about it is the world sees this, the everyone it’s no longer just, you know, people from Central and South America, the whole world floods in, people from, you know, on the terrorist watch list, from from countries that may or may not be friendly to us. We thought we see what’s happening in the Middle East. What’s happened to Israel, that attack on October 7th. We cannot forget that everyone you know, on October 6th thought everything was perfectly fine. They went to bed. We have to be on. We have to be on alert. We have to realize things. I hosted Elon Musk at the border, about eight, eight, nine months ago. And when we were driving in my truck, I told him, I go, Elon, no one is getting deported. He goes, no one.? I go, no one zero. Right now the number is zero from Del Rio sector. He goes, that’s mad. So it’s a very clear symbol that the Biden-Harris administration have given up on legal immigration, and they’re all in on illegal immigration.

BENSON: On that front, I want to get your reaction as a congressman who represents a big border district, how much worse things could get under Kamala Harris’s policies because she’s at least border czar are under Biden-Harris. If it’s just Harris, we know what she wants to do because she’s told us so. For example, here’s just one example. This is cut three. She doesn’t even want to talk about illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, illegal immigration that term she wants to get rid of. Totally.

(VO ): Also have the courage to reject that term illegal alien.

BENSON: “We must reject the term illegal alien”. She has said over and over again that undocumented immigrants are not criminals, meaning there’s no crime there while there is a crime there. But she wants to change that. Cut four here. She was running for president.

(VO): We had a very spirited debate on this stage last night on the topic of decriminalization of the border. If you be so kind, raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense rather than a crime to cross the border without documentation. Can we keep the hands up so we could see them?

BENSON: And one of those hands belong to Kamala Harris. Decriminalize illegal immigration. She said on TV she wants to reimagine Ice and start from scratch when it comes to enforcement, and then also free health care under her plan for illegal immigrants. With CNN, here she is in court ten.

(VO) : You support giving universal health care a Medicare for all to people who are in this country illegally.

(HARRIS VO): Let me just be very clear about this. I am opposed to any policy that would deny in our country, any human being, from access to public safety, public education or public health. Period.

BENSON: So, Congressman Gonzalez, based on your expertise, your experience, what your district has seen over these last four years. If you had not only the Biden Harris border czar Harris policies of the last three and a half years, but if you added on top of it a push to decriminalize illegal border crossings and then staple to people’s like court date of free health care plan courtesy of taxpayers. What effect would that have on the border crisis, which is already historic?

GONZALES: It would be detrimental. Our lives are already turned upside down. And there’s a reason why that Vice President Harris was essentially shelved because she’s terrible at her policies. I mean, remove everything else. Her policies are absolutely terrible. She’s part of the, you know, abolish ICE committee. You know, it’s just like these people are just absolutely.. their radical. It doesn’t line up. It doesn’t keep people safe, and it’s expanding. This border crisis is growing here in sin. And so I live in San Antonio. Bexar County is is the county here in San Antonio. We just had a, on Sunday, last, last Sunday, we had an officer that was shot in the line of duty by an illegal alien from Venezuela. Thankfully, she was okay. I visited with that family the day afterwards. And, you know, she’s 25 years old. She’s been on the force three years. The family comes, you know, there’s a nurse and there’s military background. It’s like an American family. More and more people in my district in particular, I think, throughout the country, are saying, hey, what about us? I’m following the rules. I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do, and all of a sudden you’re putting everyone else in front of the line but me, and people are unsafe. So I think part of what Republicans have to do, we have to highlight the economy. We have to highlight security, and we have to highlight safety. People deserve to feel safe in their own country. And right now we don’t because of the Kamala Harris failed policies that have opened up this border and created chaos.

BENSON: And you mentioned it abroad, too. It doesn’t feel like the world is a more secure place either. Right? I mean, to put it mildly.

GONZALES: No, it isn’t. I mean, it isn’t. And look, I spent 20 years in the military Guy, you know, that I spent five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I see some of the instability that happens, I think of what about the poor sucker that’s out there? You know intimately that that is that is four deployed away from their family fighting our nation’s battles. Like, what about them? Who’s protecting them when the world is unsafe? All Americans are unsafe, but especially those that are outside the United States. And we just got to get back to blocking and tackling. We need leadership and it’s not just the presidency. We need it in the Senate. We need it in the House. Leaders that can be bold, can be firm and go, wait a second, let it’s time for us to get back to these policies where we only keep America safe and prosperous but the world, I mean, you see what’s happening in kind of the markets, the last 24 hours when when things are rocking the United States, the world suffers as well. We have a we have an obligation here. And Kamala Harris isn’t the answer. And I don’t think Mark Kelly and some of these other vice president nominees are going to help her very much either. It’s time for a change. I think certainly in my district, we’re ready for we’re ready for a, a real border czar.

BENSON: Yeah, it’s Kamala Harris, it’s Joe Biden at the very top. Alejandro Mayorkas it’s also all their enablers in Congress, nearly all of the House Democrats and these so-called moderate senators Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, you know, Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, you go down the list, it’s rubber stamps for all of this. So it’s a good point to broad it out. It sits her at the top in a lot of ways, but there’s a lot of complicity and blame to go around. We’ve got to leave it there for now. Congressman Tony Gonzalez, Republican of Texas, the 23rd district down there. We always appreciate your time. We look forward to next time. Thanks for joining us.

GONZALES : thanks Guy