The immigration crisis continues to worsen due to Biden’s inconsistent border policies, and now it’s not only damaging his approval ratings, but his party as well. Indeed, there is some indication that once-safe Democratic seats may now be in jeopardy.

The epicenter at this crisis would be the Rio Grande Valley, and their residents are normally law-abiding citizens. However, they are feeling the full effects of this crisis as the illegal crossings reached a 21-year-high last July. Crime and drugs have risen accordingly.

Democrats control a trio of seats along this southernmost border, but the voting patterns are now making these seats more competitive. Thus, the GOP is going to pull all the stops to go after these seats. These three districts only voted for Biden by four percentage points at most.

Indeed, Biden’s approval rating among Latino voters paints a rough picture. 54% of the Latino voters in Texas approve of the job Biden has done overall, while only 35% approve. Moreover, only 29% approve of how Biden has handled the immigration crisis. This survey was done before the Haitians started flooding our Southern Border, folks.
There are several individuals in this area in Congress that have already announced their retirement, and Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez are both fighting to keep their seats while they are taking different approaches to this border immigration crisis.

To his credit, Cuellar has regularly bucked his party’s leadership over the years, and has been an outspoken critic of the lenient policies of his president. Additionally, this 16-year House veteran was the first one to provide photos of an overcrowded detention facility in Donna, Texas. Did Biden discuss this? No, folks. He had nothing more than a media blackout.

Last week, Cuellar even dared to wade into the debate over whether the Border Patrol agents in Del Rio had been using their horse reins as whips against the Haitian immigrants, and he actually defended their efforts to stop illegal crossings while acknowledging that all immigrants should be treated humanely. Cuellar was asked about it on “CNN Newsroom” about the photos of the Border Agents, and he said,“Certainly, we got to make sure we treat all the immigrants with respect and dignity, but I will say this: Border Patrol has had those horse brigades for a while. They’ve had them for a while, number one. Number two, they don’t carry whips, and they do not carry lassos.”

“Should those be used, even if it is a rein?” the CNN host asked.

“If there was a problem, it should be investigated, and I think that’s it,” Cuellar responded. “But we cannot paint the Border Patrol with the same type of paintbrush. What are they supposed to do, just stand there and let everybody come in? They’re supposed to be enforcing the law.”

The images surfaced, and they created an uproar among the civil rights leaders, and the Homeland Security Department launched an investigation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced last Wednesday that the border agents would no longer use their horses to prevent border crossings. Huh? That’s some pretty tough terrain there, folks. What else are they supposed to use? Oh brother.

Even though Cuellar won his last election by a whopping twenty points, he faced a serious primary challenge from Jessica Cisneros, only besting her by 3.6 percentage points. A lot of Democrats view Cuellar as being in a lose-lose situation, because he is not liberal enough for Biden’s border policies!

Vicente Gonzalez appears to be in an even more precarious situation. He won his reelection by just 2.9 points last fall even though he topped his GOP by almost 20 points in 2018. Even though he has encountered such a tremendous shift, he continues to doggedly defend the immigration policies of Kamala Harris, saying that it is a “holistic approach” that is going to “create conditions for people to want to stay in their native countries.”

“We had a good meeting a few weeks ago with the vice president, and I think she has a very good plan to get to the root causes, which will be the only way to ultimately curb the mass migration,” he told CNN in early June. “If we don’t address the root causes, all we’re doing is putting a Band-Aid on it on our border.”

However, over the past two weeks, Gonzalez has done his level best to try to steer clear of the Haitian controversy, refraining from even tweeting about it. He did note that it is “a very complex and tough situation that we have to investigate” during a recent Fox News appearance.

“We certainly need to find an orderly way to deal with the crisis,” he added. “I’m not for just releasing people into the country. We need to have a vetting process before they get here.”

Gonzalez is a member of the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus, Gonzalez continues to push back against the calls from progressives to abolish the immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. However, he has not joined Cuellar in forcefully criticizing Biden’s approach. Here’s the rub though: he seems to be talking out of both corners of his mouth because he is also decrying Biden’s approach for enriching the Mexican drug cartels.

Gonzalez is even lamenting that since Biden took office these cartels continue to take advantage of immigrants, imposing a hefty charge of $6,000 apiece for them to get to the U.S. border. These cartels have raked in over a billion dollars doing this just through the first few months of the year alone.

This three-term Texas Democrat has been unsuccessful so far in persuading the Biden Administration to support his idea of establishing a processing center on the Mexico-Guatemala border so that immigrants could apply for asylum and fly to the United States only if and when they qualify. Trump actually used an obscure health measure called Title 42 to deport immigrants immediately without due process for their asylum requests. Biden is under fire from the left for using this same policy even though he has been letting thousands of immigrants in who have requested asylum.

Gonzalez continues to assert that those who make the decision to make this dangerous journey north are only coming from certain impoverished pockets of Central American countries. Because of this, the U.S. needs to make “surgical, thoughtful, intelligent investments that create jobs, create security, that invest in agricultural projects, manufacturing and tourism and ideas that create better jobs for people to want to stay,” he argued.

Of course, he didn’t mention the fact that the Obama Administration tried to solve the problem by throwing billions at the problem, but that didn’t stop illegal immigrants from continuing to flood in.

Being the Democrat that he is, Gonzalez was for more critical of Trump’s immigration policies. Last year, he called on the administration to suspend their COVID immigration measures that had been drastically reducing the number of illegal border crossings but swelling the border camp populations in Mexico.

“Imagine these people who have gone through a 2,000-mile trek and are now in a one-acre plot of land — thousands of them. Certainly, it’s an easy place for viruses to spread,” he told The Hill newspaper.

“Mexico could probably do more too, because I went over there, and it was a mess. It’s not like detention centers on this side, as much as we complain about them. They’re living in squalor — tents on the ground and dirt. Now there’s a place for them to plug in their phones and some port-a-potties, but it’s really bad,” he added.

With the ongoing border crisis continuing to be a drag on the Biden poll numbers on a nationwide basis, you can bet your bottom dollar that the GOP is keeping a close eye on every statement that Cuellar and Gonzalez make in regards to the issue. This means that Republicans could see a path to retaking the House majority straight through this border territory. Win or lose, the Democrats are going to have to invest a lot more resources to keep these seats in their column next year.