Texas Democrat taking on Ted Cruz dismissed border as ‘right wing echo chamber’ issue amid 2022 migrant crisis

CNN —

Democratic Rep. Colin Allred of Texas, who’s challenging GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in the Republican-leaning state this fall, is promising to “fix the border” in a new ad, declaring that he “stood up to Joe Biden on the border.”

But just two years ago, the congressman dismissed the issue as one playing out in the “right-wing echo chamber,” despite a sharp increase of migrants at the US-Mexico border at the time.

Allred, a former NFL player and civil rights attorney who represents the northeast Dallas area, made his comments in February 2022 as the US was seeing a surge in migrants at the border compared with during the Trump administration – and even compared with the previous year under Biden, which smashed past records of encounters at the border.

Asked about Republicans running on the border – along with crime, inflation and “wokeism” in the 2022 midterms – Allred said he thought most voters were focused on inflation and the economy. “I think some of those others may fall into, kind of, the right-wing echo chamber,” Allred told CBS News’ Major Garrett on “The Takeout” podcast.

“I don’t hear a lot about the border here in Dallas, and I’m in a border state. Obviously, we want to have comprehensive immigration reform. We want to try and, you know, address some of these things,” Allred said.

“But it’s not – I don’t think it’s a top-of-mind issue,” he added, going on to say that he believed voters were still frustrated about Covid-19.

In February 2022, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 166,010 encounters with migrants at the US-Mexico border, reflecting a significant increase from the 101,099 encounters in the same month the previous year – a rise of 64%.

That surge was part of a larger trend in