Border Patrol Wives Challenge Pelosi: Come Visit Border, Don't 'Bring Any Security Detail'
Throughout the lengthy partial government shutdown, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steadfastly refused to negotiate with President Donald Trump on funding for necessary border walls and barriers and dismissed out of hand the very real security concerns with regard to the porous southern border.
Prior to the temporary end of the shutdown on Friday, a couple of wives of U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Rio Grande Valley sector of the Texas/Mexico border wrote a letter to Pelosi. The letter requested she pay a visit to the border to see for herself what the situation in that area was like.
The letter, which admittedly was written during an “emotional” time with a bit of a snarky attitude, argued that Pelosi had plenty of free time on her hands — what with her refusal to negotiate with Trump — and noted that Border Patrol agents’ spouses would be there to greet her, as they were unable to tend to their normal errands because their spouses hadn’t been paid during the shutdown.
“We would like to show you around! You don’t need to bring any security detail,” Jill Demanski wrote in the letter, which has since become unavailable, that she posted to Facebook. “Our husbands/boyfriends/fiances/wives/significant others are actually very good at their jobs, thank goodness! And since you see no threat here, I’m sure you can just make a quick flight down here alone. Hey, Trump might even allow you to use his plane for this visit!!”
“We’d also appreciate if you’d stop pretending that you care about federal workers,” she added. “If you did, you would care for their safety, not just their paychecks. We can hold out awhile longer, if it means our husbands and communities are safer.”
On Monday, Demanski, along with fellow Border Patrol wife Renea Perez, joined “Fox & Friends” via Skype to discuss the letter.
Asked why she had written the letter, Demanski replied that she thought it was important that political leaders saw first-hand the situation at the border to make better-informed decisions about how best to address the issue.
Perez said the problems at the border were at times “overwhelming” for the agents who guard it, and though she admitted to feeling relatively safe, she said, “They definitely need a wall or barrier in the high-traffic areas. It will allow them to do their jobs more efficiently and give them more time” to make apprehensions or receive assistance from fellow agents when confronted by large groups illicitly crossing the border.
“It is definitely needed,” Perez said in reference to border barriers, “and we just want them to come down there on the line and actually see where the whole argument is about, come and visit it and let the agents let them know why they need it.”
Asked what specifically she would like to show to Pelosi if the speaker did come down for a visit, Demanski said, “Well, I would hope that she’d go out with our agents right on the line and see. I don’t think it is fair that they are asking one or two agents to handle groups of hundreds that are crossing over at one time, and we see with these caravans, more and more are coming.”
“If we have a barrier there, it will definitely slow that down and be able to get them the help and resources that they need,” she added.
Perez noted that “it’s been tough” for Border Patrol families not being paid during the shutdown and admitted that Demanski’s letter had been written in a “time of high emotion,” as she noted that they felt like nobody really cared about their situation.
“It’s been tough, bills don’t stop and we were feeling like we had been forgotten,” Perez said.
A picture was shown of Demanski’s husband meeting with President Trump during his recent visit to McAllen, Texas, and Demanski said her husband had thanked him for making the visit “and for actually having someone that we feel has our backs.”
She argued that it wasn’t the president asking for the wall, but rather, “It’s Border Patrol and the agents asking for it, it’s not Trump. So, you can support a wall without being a supporter of Trump, they don’t have to go hand-in-hand.”
It would be nothing short of amazing if Pelosi actually took up these Border Patrol wives on their offer and paid a visit to the border.
But odds are she will ignore this overture the same way she has ignored repeated requests for a meeting with angel families — those who have lost a loved one to criminal illegal aliens — as seeing and hearing the truth of the border security first-hand would only serve to undermine her open-border narrative that is really nothing more than obstinate resistance to President Trump.
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