American Family News spoke to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) about a previous exchange he had with Alejandro Mayorkas. At a Senate hearing in March, Cruz grilled the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for not knowing the meaning of colored wristbands on illegal immigrants.
Recalling the incident, the senator tells AFN he was "stunned" and "flabbergasted" by the DHS secretary's ignorance. "[Mayorkas basically] told the American people that he is utterly incompetent at his job," Cruz argues.
As the Republican lawmaker explains, colored wristbands are still found on "just about every single illegal immigrant" who comes into the U.S. "The colors correspond to how many dollars, sometimes thousands of dollars, they owe the cartels [to cross the southern border]," he adds.
For those coming from near the border, Cruz says it could cost between $3,000 and $12,000. But if an individual is coming from China, for example, it could cost up to $50,000, he reports.
"If you stand on the banks of the Rio Grande River, you will see hundreds or thousands of these wristbands just lying in the grass," he tells AFN. He compares those wristbands to RFID (pallet tracking) tags on a ship coming into a port – illustrating his point that, to the cartels, those individuals are like cargo.
And it's not surprising, Cruz adds, that most people coming across the border illegally don't know the amount of money cartels require – the result being that thousands and thousands of them end up owing "significant amounts of money" to the cartels … and remain in debt for long periods of time.
"Once they have turned themselves in to the Biden administration," he says, "they are sent into cities all across America. If [after arriving] they don't pay off the money they owe, the cartels will murder their families back home."
According to Cruz, this contributes to the problem of drug trafficking among teenage boys, and sex slavery and forced prostitution among teenage girls. "Essentially, you've got thousands of teenage boys and girls working for the cartels and committing crimes in your city because they're still in debt to the cartels," he summarizes.
Senator Cruz considers the situation equivalent to "modern-day leg irons."
"Every Democrat is complicit in perpetuating this slavery because the policies they have put in place are what continues to enable it to happen," he concludes.
