Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines has pledged to secure the Texas border if elected governor.
On Feb. 7, Alpine and Van Horn Station Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of camouflaged migrants attempting to smuggle more than 400 pounds of drugs across the border, according to Breitbart. A Border Patrol tweet about the incident noted that "Not all aliens are asylum seekers."
“Texas is being invaded by foreign criminal organizations,” Huffines said. “They bring tons and tons of drugs into Texas, they bring human trafficking victims, as well as members of other terrorist organizations like ISIS. Texas needs a courageous leader to get a hold on this disaster. When I am Governor, I will finish Trump’s wall, and I will secure the border to stop this invasion.”
In 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized 10,586 pounds of fentanyl at the Southwest U.S. border–in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California–or 132% over the 4,558 pounds of fentanyl seized in 2020, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the San Antonio district, told KTXS-TV (ABC) in September 2021 that “we're seeing quantities of narcotics in the United States right now that we are actually seizing that is higher than I have seen throughout my career.”
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agent Valeria Morales told KTSM-TV El Paso that Mexican criminal organizations “are making a lot of money from human smuggling” and “charge between $8,000 and $15,000, depending on the person and where they are coming from.” “They have pick-up drivers in the United States. They recruit the youth to drive. They have stash house coordinators, people that transport these people from the stash houses to their final destination,” Morales said.
The Washington Examiner reported in August that security officials had expressed concern about the possibility of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists entering the United States through the "porous" southern border.
Texas's Department of Public Safety "declined to comment on the prospect of terrorists crossing over but did note that state police deployed to the border have arrested more than 600 gang members since March."
Elected in 2014, Gov. Greg Abbott is currently serving as the 48th governor of Texas. Before being elected governor, Abbott was the longest-serving Attorney General of Texas.
Huffines will face Abbott in the gubernatorial primary on March 1. From 2015 to 2019, he represented Texas' 16th State Senate District. Huffines is the CEO of Huffines Communities, a Dallas/Fort Worth-based real estate development firm.
