Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, applauded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's visit to the southern border, telling Newsmax on Tuesday that it represents a "golden age" and a vastly different message from the previous administration.
Hegseth, in his first official trip as defense secretary, visited Fort Bliss, Texas, with Trump administration border czar Tom Homan on Monday in support of the border security efforts of agents and U.S. service members.
"I think it's been far too long since you've had Cabinet members who've gone down there to offer support, to tell these people who are working so hard on our border … to defend our country that hey, we have your back," Van Duyne said on "National Report."
Van Duyne remembers the "chaos" at the border under the Biden administration, which in 2021 transformed border agents into "glorified babysitters and cab drivers" with its open-border policies.
"The night-and-day difference, when you had a VP [Kamala Harris] and other members of the Biden administration who were claiming that [border agents] were whipping migrants, that were throwing CPB under the bus, that were comparing them to Nazis, that were saying how they were going to charge them for doing their job," Van Duyne said.
"And now you got a defense secretary who's down there saying our borders are important, thank you so much for the job that you do. And if you do your job well, we've got your back. I love it. I think this is the golden age; it's exactly what we're talking about."
Van Duyne also expressed support for using detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold criminal illegal migrants, an effort announced by President Donald Trump last week.
"We have the infrastructure, but some of it actually has to be rethought and repurposed about how we're using it. If we've got these places that we are spending taxpayer dollars on that can be used for other uses, use them," Van Duyne said. "I have no problem with it."
She also applauded Trump's executive order designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
"I think [it's] one way that we can actually get our military involved in going where these drug cartels are the worst and not having to wait for them to come physically into our borders," Van Duyne said. "I think it gives us another tool on the table to be able to combat the drug trade, the drug sales, the drug cartel violence. And we should absolutely do everything that we can to be able to prevent that."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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