AOC reignites her war of words with Elon Musk by slamming his Eagle Pass border visit – as billionaire warns ‘some pretty extreme’ migrants including murderers are being allowed into the US
- Elon Musk on Thursday broadcast a livestream on his X platform from Eagle Pass, talking to community leaders about the situation
- The Texas city, 220 miles from his Austin home, is the current epicenter of the migrant crisis, with large numbers of mainly Venezuelans wading the Rio Grande
- The small border town has been overwhelmed with migrants, with more than 7,500 flooding into the tiny town of 28,000 people in just two days
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday accused a Stetson-wearing Elon Musk of taking a ‘joyride’ to the U.S.-Mexico border, after he traveled to the Texan city of Eagle Pass and warned some ‘pretty extreme people’ were arriving illegally.
Musk said he was concerned about stories of violent criminals finding their way into the country among those fleeing poverty and conflict. He discussed stories of people with gang tattoos on their faces being allowed to claim asylum, and said it was ‘insane’.
‘They have murdered someone and they are so proud of having murdered someone they tattoo one tear on their face for every person they have killed,’ said Musk.
‘And this person claimed asylum. And we let them in. A serial murderer. Who is proud of their murders. This is insane.’
Ocasio-Cortez, who has long been critical of Musk, condemned his visit to the city and singled out his guide, local Republican congressman Tony Gonzalez, for particular scorn.
‘What’s funny about this photo?’ she wrote on X on Thursday.
‘The House is holding important votes in DC tonight, people are scrambling to avoid a shutdown, but this Republican Congressman decided to skip town to joyride with a billionaire when his own party has just a single-digit margin and needs his vote.’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has long been engaged in a war of words with Elon Musk
Elon Musk is seen on Thursday in the town of Eagle Pass, Texas, with Congressman Tony Gonzalez
Musk and Gonzalez are seen surveying the scene on Thursday, with the congressman acting as a guide
The day before, Musk had mocked the Democrat congresswoman, responding to her claim that more migrants entered the U.S. through Ellis Island than were arriving illegally across the Rio Grande.
Musk commented: ‘She’s just not that smart.’
Ocasio-Cortez hit back, replying to Musk: ‘I wasn’t born rich and became the youngest woman in American history to be elected to Congress. Then I investigated Cohen, authored the largest FEMA funeral assistance program in history and led creation of a US Climate Corps to create tens of thousands of new jobs.
‘Stay mad.’
Her anger at Musk came after he warned, while in Eagle Pass, that New York City’s inability to cope with the migrant crisis was an ominous sign for the rest of the country.
In his livestream from Eagle Pass, Texas, Musk said he wanted to share with his 158 million followers scenes from the overwhelmed border town, and at one point turned his camera on rows of people sitting on the ground awaiting processing under a bridge.
But the stream crashed after only four minutes, in an echo of his disastrous attempt to host Ron DeSantis’s campaign launch on X. That broadcast, too, was marred by repeated collapse of the connection.
The South African-born Musk insisted on Thursday that he was ‘extremely pro-immigrant’, but said he wanted to see the system regulated.
And he warned that violent criminals were among the migrants.
Musk is seen with the mayor of Eagle Pass, Rolando Salinas, in a white shirt, on Thursday
Musk waves towards the crowd of migrants on the other side, beyond the rolls of razor wire
Musk and local officials toured the crossing site, where thousands of migrants pour into the United States daily
‘We are in this absurd situation where the vast majority of people are not in fact asylum seekers – you can actually read on Google in any language you want what are the magic words you need to say,’ said Musk.
‘And then you are automatically in the asylum, sort of, queue. Which takes several years before you actually see anyone. And then even if you do see one, even if you are denied, you are not deported.’
Gonzalez agreed, saying it served to attract more people, and undermine the prospects of those attempting to get into the United States legally.
Musk continued: ‘To be clear, we are both very much in favor of expanded legal immigration.
‘I think anyone who is hard-working and honest and will be a net addition to the economy – I think we should let them in.
‘But I mean what we are seeing are, in some cases, some pretty extreme individuals coming through. Obviously not suggesting everyone is like this.
‘But you are talking about a guy who came through who had face tattoos – including tears, tattooed on his face.’
Inmates are seen in a prison in El Salvador, the Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca. Face tattoos in Latin America are a sign of gang membership
Musk said that some migrants with tattoos on their faces signifying they had murdered people were being let in. Pictured: an inmate at a prison in El Salvador
Musk explained that a tear tattoo, on the face, was a gangland indication of having murdered someone.
‘They have murdered someone and they are so proud of having murdered someone they tattoo one tear on their face for every person they have killed,’ said Musk.
‘And this person claimed asylum. And we let them in. A serial murderer. Who is proud of their murders. This is insane.’
Gonzalez said it was ‘a big deal’ to have a neck tattoo or a face tattoo in Central and Southern America, and ‘these are people no one should want in their communities’.
‘Yeah, safe to say, if someone is a multiple murderer with tattoos on their face they are unrepentant, to say the least,’ said Musk.
‘Most likely if they are murdering people somewhere else, they will continue with that tradition.’
A Stetson-wearing Elon Musk was in Eagle Pass, Texas on Thursday to try and livestream interviews from the struggling border city. He warned the livestream would be ‘raw’ and unedited – and indeed, it collapsed after only four minutes
Musk is seen in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday attempting to livestream interviews with local officials
Musk opened by saying he was there to ‘eyeball what was going on, so you can get the real story.’
It is thought that 100,000 people waded through the Rio Grande and into the town last week.
In the last 10 days, law enforcement in Eagle Pass have also arrested more than 17,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Washington Examiner.
Shelters in border towns like Eagle Pass have been stretched well over capacity due to the thousands of crossings every day.
Flanked by Tony Gonzalez, the local congressman, Musk said: ‘This is not a piece that is being filmed and subsequently edited. This is the raw feed, right here.’
He added: ‘As an immigrant to the United States I am extremely pro-immigrant, and I believe we need an expanded immigration system so anyone who is hard-working and honest should be let in.
‘But we should not let in people breaking the law. That doesn’t make sense. The law is there for a reason.’
He said it was important to stop ‘a flow of people that is of such magnitude that it is leading to a collapse of essential services, and causing even America’s largest city, New York, to buckle under the pressure.’
The South African-born billionaire added: ‘If New York can’t handle it, pretty much no part of the country can.’
The live stream then crashed, after only four minutes.
Eagle Pass has seen a surge in migrant crossings in the last weeks, with 7,500 crossing the Rio Grande in two days.
Harrowing images from the porous border show droves of migrants traversing difficult terrain and wading through the Rio Grande river.
Families are seen clinging to each other, with some struggling to carry soaking wet bags of belongings across the water.
After crossing from the Mexico side in Piedras Negras, the asylum seekers are met by law enforcement, including the National Guard, before they reach long lines of razor wire.
Officers are seen helping people through the terrain, including lifting small children exhausted by the journey to safety, while many migrants are pictured queuing up as they wait to be processed.
Musk’s livestream returned after a 30-minute delay, and the connection held for 11 minutes before Musk signed off, as it crashed again.
Gonzalez, the local congressman, said that this district needed more help.
‘It’s not a partisan issue,’ said Gonzalez. ‘It’s a policy issue. We can be humane, we can protect those who need asylum, and expel those who do not.’
Throughout the month of August, upwards of 232,000 migrants crossed the US-Mexico border – and up to two million are estimated to have crossed this year
Some migrants were seen struggling with soaking wet bags of belongings as they tried to cross the river, where they were met by military troops on the Texas side
After making their way into the US, many migrants were seen queueing up as they waited to be processed by border agents
Musk added that he had heard you could search on Google for the correct terms to say to trigger an asylum claim.
‘What we are seeing here in some cases is pretty extreme individuals coming through,’ said Musk.
‘Obviously not everyone is like that.’
Musk said that he had heard stories of ‘unrepentant murderers’ with tear tattoos on their faces who had claimed asylum, and vanished into the system.
He told Gonzalez: ‘This sounds like complete madness.’
Gonzalez replied: ‘It is. Imagine having to live in it every day. That’s why it is so important for you to come down here. Does any of this look normal to you?’
Musk asked some Border Patrol agents if they wanted to speak, but they told him they were not authorized to do so.
‘Anyone else we can talk to?’ he asked Gonzalez, before ending the livestream for good.
Many migrants, including young children, are the victims of elaborate multi-billion dollar human trafficking schemes that are run by drug cartels that funnel people over the border
A border agent walked along lines of razor wire near the border in Eagle Pass, Texas
A large percentage of the migrants are from Venezuela, which has been economically devastated in recent years while the nation’s population plummets
As officials scramble for solutions, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has led the movement to bus migrants to northern states to share the burden of ineffective border policies while bringing the crisis to national attention.
In New York, where over 100,000 migrants have poured into the city, Mayor Eric Adams admitted this month that the influx could ‘destroy’ the Big Apple.
But the mayor of Eagle Pass, Rolando Salinas, criticized the comments as he slammed Biden’s response to the influx in Eagle Pass, saying on social media this week: ‘We’re not a city that has the resources of New York, Chicago, cities like that.
‘You already see big cities already complaining that they’re getting large amounts of undocumented immigrants. I mean, we’re Eagle Pass. We only have limited resources, so this is not sustainable.
‘As a mayor, what’s disappointing is that we haven’t heard from the president of the United States or the vice president of the United States…
‘To this day, I haven’t heard of a concrete plan of action to stop this from continuing to happen. Sometimes, we feel kind of abandoned here at the at the border here in Eagle Pass.’
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