Former Rep. Mayra Flores, who is seeking to win back the congressional seat she held for five months in 2022, told Newsmax Wednesday that she wants to return to Washington to finish the work she started then.
"The Democrat Party has been nothing for our community," the Texas Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," adding that Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, the Democrat who defeated her in November, 2022, has been in full support of President Joe Biden's immigration policies "that have destroyed our borders, that have destroyed our economy.
"Our country's headed the wrong way, and I just can't stand on the side and just watch them destroy this amazing country that's done so much for me," Flores added.
Flores, who was born in Mexico, shook up the district when she won a special election for an open seat in Texas' 34th congressional district in June, 2022. The seat had become open after Democrat Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. resigned and took a job at a lobbying firm.
However, she lost her seat in the general election to Gonzalez by more than 8 percentage points that November.
"I came here to the United States to accomplish the American dream, for opportunities, for freedoms," Flores said Wednesday. "The Democrat Party is killing that, killing the American dream, and this country is worth fighting for. Our children are worth fighting for, and it's not something you give up."
Republican leaders are already rallying behind Flores, as she has received endorsements from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and she said her campaign needs such support and funding so her message can be spread across the district.
That message is a conservative backing of God, family, and hard work, "because that's where we are in the Hispanic community," Flores said. "I'm grateful that they're investing in the Hispanic community, especially now here in Texas because the Hispanic community is the majority."
Democrats, she added, took the Hispanic vote for granted and for a long time thought Texas would be flipping from a red state to a blue one.
"That's not happening anymore," said Flores. "We're going to make sure justice stays bright red."
Flores's husband is a Border Patrol agent, and she said the immigration crisis plays a significant role in her district.
"We don't need the media to tell us how bad things are," said Flores. "We have been seeing it for ourselves, especially here in Brownsville. In just a few months, we had 10,000 people crossing illegally into our country a day, we had a serious crisis at our border."
But Washington, D.C., was doing "absolutely nothing," said Flores.
"They abandoned Texas," she said. "They abandoned South Texas and this isn't [only] our problem here in South Texas. It is everyone's problem. It is an American problem. You know, New York did not want to step up. California did not want to step up. These are sanctuary states that claimed they were for migrants yet they did not want to help us with the crisis. It just shows the hypocrisy."
Further, the Biden administration "has lost track of 85,000 children," said Flores. "It's not getting better. You know, they're just getting better at hiding it."
And the children are coming in with no supervision and are being abandoned in the middle of nowhere, said Flores.
"They come in with a little paper in their pocket with the name and a phone number and an address and we just send them to those people, not verifying if they're actually related to this child," she added. "They all claim to be an uncle or aunt but are potentially child traffickers, and that is how the Biden administration has lost track of 85,000 children ... Joe Biden has made the child traffickers' jobs easier, the Mexican cartel jobs easier."
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