A retired Texas Border Patrol agent told Fox News on Monday that she flipped parties after Democrats ignored the immigration crisis for decades and let it spiral out of control.
Rosa Arellano said a visit to the border by then-President Donald Trump in 2016 opened her eyes and eventually led her to the Republican Party.
“He was the first president in a long time that I recall actually came down to the border,” she told Fox & Friends First.
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Arellano said when Trump first announced his candidacy, she was apprehensive about his “celebrity” status and knew he was a polarizing figure but that as time went on, she was convinced of his dedication to fixing the border crisis.
She added that his controversial comment referring to those crossing the border illegally as “bad hombres” actually resonated with her.
“I worked as a CBP officer, and I did encounter my fair share of ‘bad hombres,”‘ she said before the Fox host pivoted.
Arellano said the crisis at the border has been “passed on from administration to administration” but added that Trump stood out because “he listened to us letting him know that we needed a multilayer solution to this situation.”
“We mentioned that we needed physical barriers at strategic locations, better infrastructure … needed more boots on the ground, better technology,” she said. “He listened to us and he pointed it out to the country.”
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Arellano also knocked Democratic mayors who recently criticized Texas for busing immigrants to their cities without notice as “pure hypocrisy” and said border communities were overwhelmed daily.
