Gina Hinojosa

I mean, he did not show the leadership we needed.

And we all paid.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And there was no reason for it.

I will tell you that about a month before his last year in office, so December before his last year in office, I got a call from one of my members in Eagle Pass.

who was in a swing district.

And he said, Gina, it is shut down the border and it's the week before Christmas.

And this is not, we cannot, this cannot continue.

So we called and said, hey, can we get a meeting?

We called the Biden administration.

Can we get a meeting with your top border people?

Because we got real problems.

We had all our border members on there and they heard an earful.

The next week they sent a delegation to Mexico so that Mexico would start enforcing border security on their side.

And at the time, crossings plummeted.

It happened, I'm telling you, like within a week.

It did hurt us, but I will tell you when I go now, it's a 180 on that issue because everybody knows someone who's been detained or deported, some beloved member of their community who's been there 20 years, who runs the panaderia, the bakery down the street.

And that's what nobody had in mind.

In fact, last week we were meeting with the executive director of the Builders Association and all their members said,