TODD: “So, what you have been a bit critical of the administration a bit in simply saying that — and I’m curious, is it more of — was it a failure to imagine what was going to happen? Is it — is it how they did — what specifically would you like to see them do differently than they’re doing right now?”
CUELLAR: “Well, first of all, within the week or one week of the inauguration, I was calling the White House already, my contacts, and saying, ‘Hey, I want you to please see what’s happening on the ground.’ This was back in January. I was telling the White House folks, ‘You’ve got to understand what scene here I’m seeing.’ I’m seeing the numbers because I live on the border. I don’t just go visit the border, I live there, I go there right after my votes in D.C. And so I’ve been warning the administration, there’s a couple of things we need to do. First we got to understand that there’s three messages. The administration’s message has to be better. You can’t say, ‘Don’t come now, come later.’ That’s a bad message. It’s got to be clear and concise. Don’t come in here illegally. That should be the message. Message number two is what I call the network — networks of friends and family. ‘Hey, Pedro, I was able to come over. You ought to come over.’ And they see images like what you’re playing right now, people are coming across, so of course they’re gonna come. Third message, real quickly, the criminal organizations. That is a powerful message because they charge an average of $,6000. Imagine we had 100,000 people that crossed in February. Do the math. That’s $600 million that they made. So they got an incentive to recruit, aggressively recruit. I just got off the phone with somebody in Mexico and they went over some things, it’s exactly what I’m telling you. We got to go after the — cut off the money that are going to the drug cartels. Otherwise we feed them and we feed them and we feed them.”