How war overseas prepared Tony Gonzales to be border congressman for Uvalde

AUSTIN, Texas — Serving in the military overseas is not supposed to prepare a member of Congress for the tragedy to be experienced while in office, but for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), what he saw at war has not been far off from what he has lived in three years of the border crisis back at home.

“I think back to my military career and having spent five years in Iraq and Afghanistan and having kind of seen what trauma looks like, seen what conflict looks like, being able to take care of people. And that’s a lot of what these last few years have been,” Gonzales said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “From the border, from Uvalde, from … the 53 migrants in the back of the truck … all this stuff has been in my district.”

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Gonzales, 43, was a cryptologist for 20 years and defense fellow for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) before he ran for office in 2020. He succeeded Rep. Will Hurd in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, which encompasses 29 counties and goes from El Paso through rural West Texas to San Antonio.

Courtesy image: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX)

When he arrived in Washington, Gonzales had expected to focus on cyber issues to help the United States fight Russia, China, and Iran, but his plans were derailed. The district became the epicenter of the border crisis and ground zero of a horrific school shooting that has demanded much of his attention, but he maintained that he has brought results for voters absent congressional action on comprehensive border security or gun reform.

Arrests of illegal immigrants rose from 70,000 per month before President Joe Biden took office to 173,000 in his second full month in office, according to government data. Unlike surges under previous administrations, the numbers never went back down, and figures have fluctuated every month, with anywhere from 144,000 to 269,000 arrests.

For a lawmaker whose district stretches 800 miles of the 2,000-mile southern border, it became the most pressing issue.

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Border towns Eagle Pass and Del Rio in Gonzales’s district have been hard hit. Border Patrol agents who apprehend immigrants between the ports of entry arrest 1,000 and 3,000 people per day between the two towns. Most immigrants are quickly released onto the streets in these towns to free up space in processing tents for others to go through intake.

Gonzales is constantly in touch with town and county officials who regularly report to him on mass releases in town and deadly vehicle chases involving human smugglers. Local officials depend on him for support, including the mayor of Eagle Pass.

“His tone was very defeated,” said Gonzales of a recent conversation. “I literally have had that same exact same conversation with him and the previous mayor 20 times, this whole, ‘Oh, everything’s on fire and they’re shutting the bridge down. They’re deploying more Border Patrol agents to process more people. The processing center’s filled up, so they’re sending them to Laredo now.'”

Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr. oversees the 29,000-person town on a volunteer basis and practices personal injury law as his day job and has not heard from Washington about any help or plan since he took the job two years ago, but Gonzales has been a strong ally.

“Throughout the border crisis, Congressman Gonzales has been in constant communication with myself and our city administration,” Salinas wrote in a text message Tuesday. “He knows the importance of the border community and how much we depend on our bridge system.”

Gonzales constantly travels around his district, even throughout the Western Hemisphere, meeting with leaders in countries that immigrants are departing from, trying to understand the issues better and come up with solutions, including his latest passed House bill to build a new federal courthouse in West Texas. It awaits action in the Senate.

Following Thanksgiving, he met with residents who lost loved ones to tragedies that resulted from criminal activity at the border. Texas residents Emilia Tambunga, 7, and her grandmother Maria Tambunga, 71, were killed upon impact on March 13 when a Louisiana man smuggling 11 illegal immigrants in a pickup truck crashed into the Tambungas’ truck while they were out to get ice cream.

Gonzales has continued to meet with them. Maria’s husband, Emilio, told Gonzales that he spends every day at the local cemetery visiting her grave. It was a reminder to Gonzales of the human toll of events, a toll he carries from hearing countless heartbreaking stories.

Courtesy image

In early November, two Georgia residents driving through Texas to visit family in Mexico were killed when a human smuggler crashed into their vehicle.

“It’s like Groundhog Day,” said Gonzales. “It’s really difficult on my team too. … Everybody is from the district.”

In the Georgia incident, Gonzales said he worked directly with the couple’s son, who flew into San Antonio, to get the family everything they needed to navigate the situation.

The calls and text messages come in day and night because the tragedies never stop and do not limit themselves to certain hours.

Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez is one of the dozens of sheriffs across Texas that has dealt with the repercussions of the border crisis as human smugglers transporting immigrants lead police on chases, often resulting in crashes or foot pursuits through landowners’ property.

“Rep. Gonzales has been available to discuss my concerns about the border crisis and the effects it’s had on Val Verde County, and has [been] supportive of our needs and concerns,” Martinez wrote in a text message.

The major tragedy Gonzales never anticipated was the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. Gonzales grew up 30 miles away and is a father of six children.

His constituents have pleaded for gun and immigration reform, which would require an act of Congress. Gonzales said gridlocked Washington was worse an environment than he expected it to be, and he has found solutions to some problems by taking matters into his own hands.

“One thing I was expecting — more willingness to work together to solve problems. That is not the House of Representatives,” Gonzales said. “I wasn’t used to that and being in the military, always solving problems, working with different people.”

Courtesy image: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX)

Gonzales tries to deliver wins however he can, sometimes by keeping the issue front and center in people’s minds, including the 100 members of Congress he has hosted on border tours, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. But his greatest focus is finding ways to get people back home “wins.”

Gonzales worked behind the scenes with Union Pacific Railroad to get them to give Eagle Pass a check for $100,000 to cover costs sustained responding to the border crisis. He said it was one way to get results when Congress overlooked border towns and paid northern cities to cover costs of assisting immigrants who traveled from the border, including New York City, which received $100 million.

When he took office in early 2021, he met with leaders in all 119 towns and cities in his district and asked what they needed most.

“Some are saying roads, some are saying water, some are saying communications, teachers, hospitals,” Gonzales said. “Uvalde, when I met with the mayor, when I met with the judge, when I met with the sheriff, they said, ‘Tony, we need a mental health hospital.’ They were the only community out of any of them that said they need a mental health hospital. So they already knew.”

Jae C. Hong/AP

Before the Uvalde shooting, Gonzales acquired $2 million for a new mental health facility in Uvalde. The money for the contract was awarded after the shooting.

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Last year, Gonzales met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and was able to get a Border Patrol station in Cotulla, Texas, reopened after its closing months earlier.

“That’s when I started learning. Hey, not everything is legislation. How do you just go straight to the source and fix some of these things? But you got to be able to articulate why you need to do it,” he said.