Newly-elected congresswoman Mayra Flores, R-Texas, reacted to First Lady Jill Biden's comments comparing Latinos to "breakfast tacos"on Sunday, telling host Maria Bartiromo that she is not surprised by the remarks.
"It doesn’t surprise me," Flores said. "Jill Biden and the far-left don’t see us as Americans. They see us as tacos."
"And they think that by giving us tacos, playing Latin music, that’s all it’s going to take for us to vote for them, and it’s not," she continued. "They’re going to have to get to work."
Speaking on "Sunday Morning Futures," she then argued that "we really have had enough of the Democrat Party’s far-left policies that are hurting us tremendously here in South Texas and in the entire country."
Jill Biden has since apologized for her recent comments at a Hispanic conference in San Antonio, Texas.
Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa tweeted the first lady’s apology for her on Tuesday, a day after she made the comparison in her speech at the 2022 UnidosUS Annual Conference while talking about UnidosUS President Raul Yzaguirre’s work in the organization.
"Raul helped build this organization with the understanding that the diversity of this community, as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio, is your strength," Biden said Monday.
"The First Lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community," LaRosa wrote the next morning after a media firestorm.
Flores, who last month won a South Texas seat held almost exclusively by Democrats for more than 100 years, argued that Democrats have "abandoned the Hispanic community."
Flores, who was born in Mexico and is married to a Border Patrol agent, stressed that, right now, the biggest concern for the Hispanic community is the economy as well as "the border crisis that is hurting us tremendously here in South Texas and throughout the country."
"Our border patrol agents are truly our heroes," Flores told Bartiromo on Sunday. "They don’t have the resources and the manpower to handle this crisis."
HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN AMONG THOSE CROSSING US-MEXICO BORDER ILLEGALLY THIS WEEK
She argued that the situation at the border "is really a humanitarian crisis" and that "the Biden administration doesn’t care," further asserting that the Biden Administration "is at fault" for the situation.
"They continue to encourage people to come here illegally knowing that they’re going to have to go through such [a] dangerous journey to come here to the United States," she continued. "Why not focus on legal immigration and improve the legal process so good people that want to come here to work hard for the American dream can do it, but not have to go through that dangerous journey?"
"It blows my mind," Flores said, positing why the Biden administration would "continue to push illegal immigration knowing it’s funding criminal organizations that have taken over the entire southern border."
Last week, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection released its June 2022 Monthly Operational Report showing that record levels of border crossings are continuing, including a record-setting number of terrorist sightings and an increased number of unaccompanied children and illegal drugs found at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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In the report, the CBP said there were more than 207,416 encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border for the month of June. While the overall number of border interactions is down from May’s all-time high of 239,000, it is the fourth month in a row of more than 200,000 encounters.
FOX News’ Houston Keene and Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.