A group of Republican senators made a trip to the Texas-Mexico border Thursday night. Led by Texas Senators Cornyn and Cruz, the senators were able to see nighttime activity on the Rio Grande River as border patrol officers worked the midnight patrol. A smaller group of House Democrats toured a detention facility in a town further away from the border Friday. The dueling visits from the lawmakers show the divide in how to manage the crisis on the southern border.

Republican senators were on the bank of the Rio Grande River Thursday night and witnessed migrants coming across from the Mexican side of the border. They could also hear members of drug cartels taunting them and saw human smugglers shining flashlights at them. Fortunately, no gunshots were fired at the lawmakers. Senator Cruz noted the cartel members mocking the observers and that was when Beto O’Rourke decided to do a little mocking himself. In order to downplay the violence frequently seen at the border by cartels, O’Rourke tweeted, “THANK GOD YOU SURVIVED THE HECKLING!”

THANK GOD YOU SURVIVED THE HECKLING! https://t.co/IT7vQdldWy

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) March 26, 2021

Cruz documented the activity and narrated the video. Apparently, this triggered poor Beto.

‘That’s Mexico right over there, and you can see there are three smugglers right there,’ Cruz is heard saying in the video, ‘standing on the Mexico side looking at us.’

He also said those smugglers were taunting the senators on the U.S. side. The footage is hard to see, showing grass and the dark river with a few flashes of light. Cruz said those were the smugglers’ flashlights.

He posted another dramatic video, describing it as ‘live footage from the banks of the Rio Grande,’ that showed him standing on the river’s edge, giving a report on what he and the Republicans saw on their midnight march.

‘So it’s past midnight and I’m standing on the shore of the Rio Grande, the water is right behind me down. I’m down on the Texas border along with 18 senators, we made the trip to see the crisis that is playing out,’ Cruz said as he stood in the weeds on the shoreline.

Dogs could be heard barking in the background as he spoke.

‘On the other side of the river is Mexico,’ Cruz noted. ‘The other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members, human traffickers right on the other side of the river, waving flashlights yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the Border Patrol, because they know that under the current policy the Biden administration, they can flood over here.’

The group of Republicans, other than Cornyn and Cruz, included Senators John Thune, John Barrasso, Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John Hoeven, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, Steve Daines, James Lankford, Dan Sullivan, Thom Tillis, John Kennedy, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mike Braun, and Tommy Tuberville. Senator Susan Collins acknowledged the dangers the border patrol officers face while monitoring the flow of migrants crossing over into the United States Thursday night. “It’s given me a renewed appreciation of our customs and border patrol agents and the dangers that they face.”

The senators were given a boat tour of the river by border patrol on Friday and held a news conference after touring a detention facility for unaccompanied minors in Donna, Texas.

Before we began our full day of touring critical areas around the southern border, the Senators I brought down to Texas wanted to thank the @CBPRGV midnight patrol for all the hard work they are doing to keep our nation safe amidst this crisis. pic.twitter.com/gR1PWWHQGy

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) March 26, 2021

Conspicuously missing from any border patrols or facility tours was Kamala Harris. She’s been handed management duties of the border crisis by Joe Biden. I have been pondering how the border patrol agents at the border and ICE, too, for that matter, feel about Biden’s choice of crisis manager. Has everyone forgotten how Kamala spoke of those working on the southern border during the Trump administration? She compared them to the KKK during a Senate hearing, is on the record as a member of the abolish ICE wing of the Democrat Party, and acknowledged that those illegally crossing the border should not be considered committing a crime during her run for the presidential nomination. Is all that just down the memory hole now? Apparently so. Former Acting ICE Director, Tom Homan, blasted Biden’s choice of Harris.

She vilified the men and women of the Border Patrol during the last surge, saying they are mistreating immigrants. She’s an open borders advocate. She wants to abolish ICE and she compared immigration officers to the KKK during the Senate hearing, and you want to put her in charge of immigration enforcement on the border? I couldn’t think of a worse choice.

The DNC tried to play a little offense after videos and tweets from the Republican senators were seen on social media.

‘In a desperate attempt to mislead the country, world-renowned political clown Ted Cruz and his hapless sidekick John Cornyn are bringing their show on the road with their latest political stunt,’ the Democratic National Committee said in a statement on Friday.

‘If there’s one thing Ted Cruz knows how to do, it is to disingenuously grandstand for TV cameras. President Biden took more action to address immigration issues in one day than Senate Republicans have in the last four years. If Senator Cruz and his colleagues were serious, they’d be in Washington working with President Biden to be a part of the solution,’ said DNC spokesperson Eduardo Silva.

Hey, where is all that civility we’ve been promised from the Biden administration? The DNC sure doesn’t sound very civil here. Also, how can Republicans work with Sleepy Joe or Kamala as long as they both continue to deny there is a crisis at the border? It’s just a challenge, you know, and besides, everything was so much worse during Trump’s time in the White House, right? Unfortunately for the current administration, the numbers say otherwise. This is a crisis of Joe Biden’s own doing because he is appeasing the open borders wing of his political party.

A Democratic congressional delegation tour of the Carrizo Springs Office of Refugee Resettlement facility for unaccompanied children at the border was led by Rep. Joaquin Castro. The purpose was to make sure the minors are “respected and humanely treated” and to make sure they are placed with their family sponsors or relatives as soon as possible.” Naturally, he blamed Trump for the current crisis.

“We need to be clear about something. President Biden inherited a situation where the previous administration had sought to dismantle the infrastructure for processing asylum seekers in the United States,” Castro said.

Castro also said the Trump Administration used the pandemic as an excuse to expel people who were seeking asylum.

Sorry, Joaquin, we need to be clear that Biden “inherited” a system of policies in place at the border that was working during the Trump administration. Biden immediately eliminated the Remain-in-Mexico agreement as well as the use of Title 42 which specifically allows the U.S. to protect public health by turning away illegal migrants during the time of a pandemic. Shouldn’t a congressman know that? He does, he’s just playing politics, like his pal Beto.