WASHINGTON – After an eye-opening and academic journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) shared tales together with her colleagues and the press about what she witnessed. In response to the border go to, Ernst launched a brand new effort to focus on cartel spotters and improve penalties for these aiding and abetting criminality on the border.

Click on HERE or the picture above to look at the complete video.

In a press convention yesterday, the senator described one account, shared together with her by a pilot in Customs and Border Safety’s (CBP) Air and Marine Operations, of a mom who needed to depart behind the physique of her toddler throughout her trek throughout the border’s desert terrain: “One of many pilots instructed us that there was a two-day interval the place they had been trying to find the physique of a toddler that had been left behind by the toddler’s mom. The mom had instructed the brokers when she was doing her consumption that she needed to depart her toddler behind. She gave them an approximate location of the place the toddler can be situated. They searched for 2 days and had been unable to search out the physique of the kid.”

Click on HERE or the picture above to learn extra from Fox.

Ernst shared the disturbing studies she heard from Border Patrol of ladies – as younger as 5 – 6 – being sexually abused by cartels and coyotes: “The Border Patrol instructed us that about 30% of the ladies and ladies which can be being trafficked by the cartels as much as the border are being sexually abused alongside the way in which. And people are simply those which can be reporting. So the Border Patrol brokers really feel that 60% of them having been abused can be a extra correct quantity. It truly is appalling,” Ernst instructed Fox Information.

Click on HERE or the picture above to learn extra from The Washington Instances.

The Washington Instances recounted a narrative shared with them by Senator Ernst a couple of former Marine she met on her journey. The Marine, who served in Afghanistan, described his time on the border as akin to his time within the navy: “He mentioned, ‘I really feel like I’m in Afghanistan yet again.’…‘I’ve seen extra useless our bodies right here’ than he did in Afghanistan. He mentioned, ‘Change the Taliban with the cartel’ as a result of they’re principally the identical sort of group: They management all the land there, they management who goes in, who goes out,” Ms. Ernst mentioned.

Whereas chatting with press in Texas, Ernst highlighted what she has heard from her native legislation enforcement in Iowa in regards to the circulate of medicine by means of the porous border and into cities throughout the nation: “The methamphetamine, the fentanyl – all that’s working up I-35, into communities like Mason Metropolis and Des Moines in Iowa. Ninety-nine p.c of that, my legislation enforcement officers say, is coming proper out of Mexico.”

###