“They’re lying. They’re lying to you. When someone like Beto O’Rourke says ‘Oh, they’re just coming over because they want a better life,’ that’s bull.”

Kimberly Fletcher, president and founder of Moms for America, Inc., has just returned from the Moms Caravan to the border. Fletcher, along with 35 other moms from 14 states, traveled to the border to speak with mothers who live near the border. The topic? The Caravan traveling through Mexico on its way to the U.S. They wanted to find out what border moms thought about the migrants entering the U.S. illegally. What she saw shocked her. “These people are living in a war zone,” Fletcher told The Stream in an interview. 

Stray Bullets at School

Their first stop was a school in Hidalgo that backed up to the border. Teachers told Fletcher that they frequently had lockdowns at the school. When the cartels are fighting, bullets are sprayed in the area — a lockdown was one way to keep the children safe. “There’s a reason for a wall right there,” explained Fletcher, “to stop the bullets so that the kids can go to school without having to worry about playing on the playground and getting shot by a stray bullet from a cartel on the other side.”

“We need the border wall. Is it going to solve everything? No, but it’s going to keep those little kids [at school] from being shot.”

Local Deadbeats

The kids had more than just a spray of bullets to worry about. Teachers also said that illegal immigrants know when the bell rings at the school. A local “deadbeat” — the term for an American who helps sneak illegal immigrants into the U.S. — pulls up in the car lane, the illegal immigrants hop in the car, and away they go. The illegal immigrants hire the “local deadbeat” to drive them around, to shop or to reach their next destination.

The illegal immigrants also interact with the children, often pretending to be the kids’ mom or dad in an effort to mix in with the crowd. But sometimes they do much worse.

‘I’m Afraid All Day Long’

Traffickers kidnap kids right out of the line of those waiting for parents. One 6-year-old girl turned up in a field half-dead. Doctors discovered the DNA of 30 men who’d raped her. Border families are terrified. “They’re afraid to go outside,” Fletcher explained. One mom told Fletcher that she doesn’t let her kids go outside, or even walk the two blocks to school. “I’m afraid all day long when they’re at school,” the mom said. That family had to get rid of their swimming pool, since illegal immigrants were constantly bathing in it.

And between 2:00 and 3:00 o’clock in the morning, every morning, the family’s German shepherds “go crazy” because that’s when illegal immigrants walk through their property. “I don’t know who they are, I don’t know where they’re from,” said the mom. “I don’t know what they want. But they’re almost all men. You’ve got these random men coming through your property, sleeping in your sheds.” Several times a month, illegal immigrants will pound on their door in the middle of the night, wanting something. Fletcher said the border moms get “completely freaked out,” said Fletcher. “They have security systems, they sleep with guns under their pillows.”

A high school teacher told Fletcher that one day a helicopter landed on the roof of her school. She found out that there were illegal immigrants in the area running drugs. Authorities were also concerned about human trafficking. “It’s horrible, horrible. It’s a major thoroughfare.” 

Bombing at the Border

Fletcher saw first-hand a crime scene beneath a checkpoint. “Look under the overpass and there’s ripped-up women’s underwear, condoms, alcohol bottles, it was horrible. We were all just sick to our stomachs.” As they were filming the area, a bomb went off. “We caught the bomb on video — we were recording live when it went off.” Their security guard rushed them back to the caravan and they left.

‘Tell Our Story’

Afterwards, the moms caravan drove to another town, where they met a large family who agreed to speak with them. “They’re angry and they’re afraid. One of the moms started crying.” Fletcher asked the family if they would go on camera, but they declined. “They said, ‘We can’t, we’ll get fired from our jobs. If we tell them, then the cartel will come after us, or we’ll get fired from our jobs or they’ll take our kids. You don’t understand how bad this is.'” They begged her to tell their story. 

The family had lived on that property for more than 200 years. Part of the property backed up to the river. “They live in constant fear because [illegal immigrants] come over in boats and rafts.” One day the mom went into the laundry room to do laundry, and an illegal immigrant was standing there. She told him to get out, but he refused. He wanted to make a phone call. Luckily, when she told him to leave again, he went. “Now they have guns in their house. They said they need to protect their family.” They’ve also found illegal immigrants in their shed on their property. 

Those Who Help

A major Christian charity helps the illegal immigrants — something that doesn’t sit well with the family. “We can’t even get pencils for our kids at school, but they’re dumping money on these people that aren’t even citizens of this country, giving them clothes, books and everything else.” The family’s taxes are rising, too. One mom told her the taxes were going up specifically because they have to pay for more schools and more services because the number of illegal immigrants arriving. 

A Better Life?

Fletcher conceded that some illegal immigrants want a better life in the U.S. “Sure. But most of who have come over are abandoning their wives and children and mothers and families from where they came from to come here and invade our country. They are from Middle Eastern countries, they’re from Asia, and they wear gang signs, and they’re carrying their own flags and singing their national anthems and spitting on and burning the American flag. That’s not the kind of people who are going to assimilate in our culture, and we don’t want them…. What we saw when we were on the border was basically a steady stream of what’s coming en masse.”

The Truth Will Come Out

Fletcher wants to spread the word that the border is a dangerous place because of the illegal immigrants — mostly men — flooding the area. She wants a wall and military personnel to secure the border. “The hardest thing about this is we’re being lied to,” said Fletcher. “When you go down there and you see the truth, the truth will come out. And that’s what we want to do.”

Watch one mom talk about her experience living on the border:

Watch a video taken at the border where the moms say a bomb went off: