By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
Monday, Congressman Tony Gonzales’ effort to bring every member of the house to the border continues as he brought five more members to Uvalde and Eagle Pass, both in Texas’s 23rd District.
The Republican Congressional members on the visit included Representatives María Elvira Salazar (FL-27), Erin Houchin (IN-09), Aaron Bean (FL-04), Monica De La Cruz (TX-15), and James Moylan (Guam-District At Large). Gonzales has brought more than 100 congressional members to the border on 16 visits.
However, at the press conference at the end of the visit Monday, the first questions were about the State Republican Executive Committee’s 57-5 vote to censure Gonzales two days earlier.
Recently, Gonzales failed to toe the party line on gun control and same sex marriage, irritating many Republicans.
“He violated the Republican parties’ core principles and legislative priorities 3 times in the current biennium,” said Fernando Garcia, a Del Rio state Republican committeeman for Senate District 19 who voted for the censure.
Gonzales quickly took the questions about the vote, challenged his opponents and basically said he’d beat them in the two previous elections and was planning to do it again.
“I will outwork them,” Gonzales said.
He also quickly got the press conference, being held under the International Bridge in Eagle Pass’s Shelby Park on the topic of the day, his border visit, that included the stop at the Uvalde Border Patrol station where hundreds of unaccompanied minors are held.
“The Uvalde Border Patrol station is a spot that no member of congress has visited,” Gonzales said. “We’re talking tens of thousands of unaccompanied children that have been forgotten. Nobody cares about these people, regardless of their legal status. These are innocent children. We got to visit with them firsthand. As a father of six, this is very difficult to see.”
HIs fellow house members found it tough as well.
Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who speaks Spanish fluently, visited with a 5-year-old child at the Uvalde facility. “She was being held by this 13-year-old Honduran girl who said they just handed the 5-year-old to her. The border patrol agents told her, ‘Hey, could you take care of this child.”’
Salazar said the 5-year-old told her she was just trying to get to the United States and when Salazar told her she was in the United States, she smiled.
The child had her father’s name, but no idea where he was.
“She has no idea where the father is, where her mother is, it’s just heartbreaking,” Salazar said.
Congresswoman Erin Houchin, a former Indiana case worker for social services, said the visit concerned her.
“I’m concerned about where they’re ultimately ending up and how they got here,” she said.
Gonzales said there were several hundred unaccompanied minors in the facility.
Gonzales district covers 820 miles along the border, or 42 percent, more than double Rep. Rau; Grijalva’s Arizona district that covers 368 miles.
The writer can be reached at Joelalangton@gmail.com .
