Border Area Congressman Raided by FBI
Curiously, Out-of-Town Journalists Present for Coverage
Hello again Friends,
A lot going on in South Texas and Mexico right now. We’ll try and keep it high and tight for you.
Firstly, news that’s still technically breaking as we write this: FBI agents executed a search warrant today at the home of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar. Cuellar has been an institution in deep South Texas, since the 90s, serving as a State Rep, Secretary of State for Texas in 2001, and then taking office as the U.S. Rep. for District 28 in 2005, unseating Ciro Rodriguez in a particularly nasty race— a position he has held ever since.
Reporters from the Rio Grande Valley appear to be the first on the scene, with the most and best coverage of the story— snapping photos as FBI agents carry materials out of the house and take their own pictures of a pair of pickup trucks in the Congressman’s driveway. There’s also word of FBI activity at the Congressman’s Laredo office. No word yet if his Washington offices have also been scrutinized.
Credit to reporter Valerie Gonzalez. Laredo is some distance away from her usual stomping grounds further South in the RGV. This would suggest some kind of a leak at the FBI, or somewhere else, alerting her to this activity. Even if something like this is gift-wrapped for a reporter, it is still an acknowledgement of their past job performance.
Here's her twitter thread, documenting everything.
CNN, FOX, and all the rest of the usual suspects are soon to be taking over on this one, putting a full court press on the coverage. There’s no word yet on what’s prompted the raid, but one can almost hear the flurry of Public Information Requests and FOIA’s flying through the air, looking for copies of the warrant for the raid.
It may take a while, but once the warrant information is out, there should be much more clarity as to what is happening.
Publicly, the Congressman has pledged his full cooperation.
The Texas Tribune’s coverage of the matter is also worth a look— doing a good job of contacting the Webb County District Attorney’s Office for comment and background.
While Cuellar has detractors, he’s known within the larger Democratic House caucus as a mostly loyal member who carries his weight in fundraising for fellow Democrats. Cuellar is on track next term to secure an appropriations subcommittee gavel, a designation known around the Capitol as “a cardinal.”
Webb County-Zapata County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said he is unaware of what prompted the FBI investigation. He said Cuellar is revered in the South Texas community and has proved to be accessible to local officials and community members.
Alaniz said he believes the timing of the FBI raid is “questionable” and worries it may adversely affect Cuellar’s reelection campaign.
“He’s done an excellent job in all the years of service when he was a state representative, and now as a United States congressman, and I myself continue to have the utmost respect for Congressman Cuellar,” Alaniz said. “The law is the law, however, and the law has to be respected. So you know, in time that’s what the court process is for. And the truth will eventually come out.”
The Tribune also notes that Cuellar is facing a stiff primary rematch from Jessica Cisneros, an attorney who is regarded as being somewhat more progressive than he is. In 2020, she came within 4 percentage points of defeating Cuellar.
Speaking personally, Mr. Cuellar is well-known to us from our days covering news in Webb County. He’s always been affable, easy-to-reach, and reliable with a solid quote on just about any subject pertinent to his neck of the woods and sometimes some outside it.
Many an arch-conservative might dislike him for his seeming facility at bringing the bacon home to his district, but that’s the name of the game these days, and if your local congressman isn’t doing it— then that pork will be heading elsewhere. This reminds one of a survey many years ago, that found most voters hate Congressmembers in general. But their guy? He’s pretty good.
In any event, it’s never a good look when there’s an FBI search warrant involved, but one hopes there’s been some kind of mistake. It’s our opinion, that on the whole, Cuellar has been good for his constituents.
If you haven’t been keeping track of Todd Bensman’s reporting down in Tapachula, a couple days ago he landed a pretty good scoop which doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it deserves.
It focuses on what Mexican journalists and others are calling “ant operations,” which move tens of thousands of migrants to the U.S. Mexico border in ways designed to avoid the attention or notice of journalists and government figures.
At one time, “operaciones hormigas” were a technique used by cartels and smugglers. Breaking up large chunks of people and moving them around in small groups. Now, Bensman reports, the Mexican Government has adopted it, distributing large numbers to different border cities— avoiding the attention getting mass-caravans.
So lets restate and underline this: Bensman says the Mexican Government is secretly facilitating the U.S. Border Crisis.
This wouldn’t be the first time the Mexican Government may have bucked the Biden administration, which has been counting on Mexico to block immigrants at the Guatemalan border. Past reporting by Bensman suggested Mexican Government involvement in the formation of the large group of Haitians that occupied the area beneath the bridge in Val Verde County.
In this latest report, Bensman also highlights the Mexican Government’s use of “QR Code” visas and what it all forecasts for the rest of 2022.
Alarming stuff.
It should be noted, that Bensman works for the Center for Immigration Studies. The Southern Poverty Law Center has the organization on it’s “bad” list, for whatever that is worth these days.
And finally tonight— a lengthy piece in the New Yorker, about the mounted Border Patrol agents who were falsely accused of whipping Haitian immigrants.
Believe it or not— the investigation into the matter is still not complete.
Obviously, being in the New Yorker, you can count on the article’s perspective to be a progressive one. But, conservative readers may still find it worth their while for some background information into the incident that may have escaped notice.
There are some minor factual errors and omissions in the piece. Perhaps the most obvious one, is the reporter’s statement that Governor Abbott surged “Border Patrol” to the Del Rio bridge. Obviously, they meant to say “Department of Public Safety Troopers” and the difference between the two escaped editors at the New Yorker. It suggests a lack of familiarity with the border and border issues on their part. No shock— the magazine’s called the “New Yorker,” not… “The Borderer.” Or something like that.
One thing that does jump out, however, is the scorn this progressive is heaping upon Alejandro Mayorkas, and by extension, Joe Biden. This begs the question: Is anybody happy with what’s going on around here?
In any event— this gives us an excuse to plug our own writing about the incident— looking at some of the historical roots for the kind of overreaction these mounted Border Patrolmen have suffered.
That’s all for now— we hope everyone’s having a great week. If you’re in South and Central Texas over the next couple days, stay warm and drive carefully. Winter weather advisories suggest there may be some icy conditions on the highway in some parts. As always, we should point out, this newsletter predates our employment with Kinney County and is an independent work product. Any opinions or errors contained within are ours alone, and do not reflect County policies. See you again soon.
Anyone down on the border able to characterize Cuellar's public position on federal border policy? It's a real head scratcher to come up with a reason for a Democrat Justice Department to make such a strong statement. It's not like the SEC is looking into Pelosi's recent stock transactions.