The kidnappings of four Americans in Mexico, leading to the deaths of two of them, stem from the border crisis and will have to lead to "hardcore conversation" between President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Rep. Rich McCormick told Newsmax on Tuesday.
Further, as the Americans had crossed the border for medical procedures, the violent crime points to the dangers of such trips, the Georgia Republican said on "National Report."
"We're going to have to decide what we're going to do," McCormick said. "It's not like when we had federal government agencies involved and we had people kidnapped and we had to go in there and do real-world operations. The question is, How seriously are we going to take this one?"
The FBI reported Sunday it was working with Mexican authorities to find the four missing people. A relative of one of them said they traveled from South Carolina so one of the women could get a tummy tuck operation in Matamoros, a border city across from Brownsville, Texas.
A U.S. official familiar with the investigation told CNN that the Americans were targeted by a Mexican cartel that likely believed them to be Haitian drug smugglers.
McCormick, an emergency room doctor, said on Newsmax that he has personally seen the side effects of such medical tourism procedures, usually cosmetic surgeries, being done in Mexico and other foreign countries, and "a lot of times they come back with serious consequences."
"A lot of times they have infections, sometimes bleeding," he said. "We lost a couple of patients this year in our hospital from complications from those surgeries abroad. It's something that people are trying to save money with. It's elective surgery, so it's very expensive in the United States, but you get top care in the United States. In other countries, it's not guaranteed at all."
The border crisis has also led to the deadly growth of fentanyl overdoses. McCormick noted he treated several emergency room patients for overdoses, and many of them "were already dead when they got there."
"I probably saw almost at least one case per night that I worked, sometimes up to five cases in one night from overdoses," McCormick said, adding that the violence in Mexico is a result springing from the drug trafficking that's happening.
"Mexico should be doing great," he said. "This goes to show you even though we have a lot of problems with our government, we have a much better government. They have all the resources."
But Mexico's government, he said, is corrupt and "ruled over by thugs with machine guns who are funded by drug money."
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