A 5-year-old and a 3-year-old girl were found wandering the Texas desert on the U.S. border with Mexico. They’d both been raped.

Meanwhile, Brooks County, Texas’ Benny Martinez is nicknamed “The Undertaker Sheriff” for all the migrants’ bodies his department has found north of McAllen – nearly 1,000 since 2009. In one case, he and his deputies found the bodies of five migrants who apparently died while huddling together from the cold.

Such are the untold horror stories of America’s open border, says Kansas City talk show host Pete Mundo of KCMO radio. Mundo heard those stories and more Sept. 21-22 while interviewing Border Patrol agents, border-state sheriffs and others at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Hold Their Feet to the Fire “radio row” in Washington, D.C.

But of all the stories he heard, few of which you will hear or read in “mainstream” media, it’s the young sexual assault victims that are now seared in Mundo’s memory, as the father of a girl of similar age.

“It turned out that they had recently been raped on their journey to America,” Mundo said in an interview with The Heartlander. “You’re talking about a 5- and a 3-year-old who were with no adults, who were on this incredibly dangerous journey, who were lucky to be alive – and were also rape victims at 5 and 3 years old, likely by the drug cartels and their members.

“And let’s not forget, too, drug cartels aren’t doing this for free, so a lot of these children may end up as sex slaves to pay back the cartels. So the horror that these young people deal with is not done when they step foot in America in many cases. In some cases, it may only just be beginning, which is terrible, tragic and disturbing to think about.”

In his interview on Mundo’s show, Sheriff Martinez said his is “a small county in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of everything. … We pretty much lead the southwest corridor in human recoveries.”

And, he notes, they certainly don’t find all the bodies.

“For those who view this open border policy as the humane thing to do, tell me how it’s humane,” Mundo says, “when there are thousands of people who have died and will continue to die on this journey, on this trip, through no fault of their own. What is humane about that?”

Americans also are dying as a result of open borders. One student died and at least three others overdosed from fentanyl since the start of the school year just in Oak Grove, Missouri east of Kansas City.

Mexican cartels have become adept not only at smuggling in people, but also using those people as distractions so that Border Patrol agents can’t catch all the drugs coming in, such as the fentanyl, which is deadly in minute doses.

“This is impacting every family, every community in this country, including Kansas City,” Mundo says. “And if nothing else, if you want to come away with the idea that somehow this is the humane thing to do, to have an open border policy, so be it. But when it comes to the drugs that are potentially killing and will continue to kill our young people – with fentanyl now being the leading cause of death for 18-to-45-year-olds in this country – then it should be an apolitical issue that we stop that flow at the southern border.

“We know who’s doing it, we know where it’s coming from, and this administration has zero interest in fixing that problem.

“There’s nothing about human suffering and trying to kill our children with drugs that should be partisan. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how this became a partisan thing, but it is. And our politicians – notably our Democratic politicians – need to wake up to that fact, that there are lives on the line, not just those who are trying to get here, but those Americans who are dealing with this today.”

That was the consistent theme of the FAIR event, Mundo says – the political class’ abject failure to secure the border and protect lives on both sides of it.

And the failure has never been more spectacular than it is now.

“During its first year and a half in office,” FAIR wrote in a press release, “the Biden-Harris administration has created an unprecedented border, immigration, national security, public health, and humanitarian crisis along our southern border. Some 5 million illegal entries have been recorded since the president was sworn in …”

Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Dannels echoed the warning in an interview with Mundo. Just in the first eight months of 2022, he said, his department has responded to 814 border-related calls from residents over and above normal calls for service. The county jail, which holds just over 300, has taken in 853 suspects just for border-related crimes. Since March, he said, his county has recorded 324 victims of border-related crimes.

Up to 1,000 smugglers enter Cochise County each month to transport illegal immigrants up to Phoenix, Dannels said.

“I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and right now we’re seeing the ugliest it’s ever been,” Dannels said. “It’s just sad what we’re seeing. It truly is. Having an open border, the way we have it right now, is the largest crime zone in this country.”

According to Dannels and Mundo, the only solution is to vote for candidates who will actually secure the border.

“Know your candidates,” Dannels says. “Educate yourself on the candidates. And any candidate who doesn’t want a secure border, there’s a problem right there.”