A toddler victimized by the president’s border crisis was named the driving factor of her godfather’s congressional campaign.
(Video: Fox News Digital)
President Joe Biden and the Democrats may wish to see responsibility for their globalist border policies shifted to the GOP, but at least one family was pushing back using their personal tragedy as a call for action. Months after three-year-old Maddie Hines was killed after her mother’s car was allegedly struck by the errant driving of an illegal alien, her godfather South Carolina state Rep. Stewart Jones (R) has made her a touchstone for his seeking higher office.
“The main reason I am running for the 3rd Congressional District is because my goddaughter, Maddie Hines, died senselessly and needlessly due to the actions of an illegal alien,” the elected official told Fox News Digital in an interview alongside the victim’s mother, Chelsey Hines.
“This is really a personal issue to me,” he continued. “I’m going to go to Washington and fix this problem and secure our border.”
The mother recounted the last moments of her daughter’s life when the girl had said “I love you” just before the accident where 25-year-old illegal alien Gabriel Arteaga, being sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had allegedly run a stop sign before driving into the side of the Hines’ vehicle without a license.
“I just felt like that day, time stood still. It literally stood still. People talk about that all the time, but I immediately felt God’s love, his peace. It was like an eerie — you just can’t explain it unless you go through it,” she explained and also noted, “It’s been really hard, but…very peaceful. I feel like God has been with us through it all.”
In addition to the gut-wrenching challenge of dealing with the loss of a child, Hines expressed how difficult it has been to experience leftists downplaying concerns about the constant waves of foreign nationals pouring into the country.
“I’ve seen interviews where people are laughing, and they are saying the border is not an issue. It’s not an issue because it doesn’t apply to you, and you have not become that statistic yet,” she expressed. “And until your family goes through what we have gone through, the loss of a child — it’s something we deal with every single day.”
Through it all, the mother detailed how grateful she was to have family friend Jones in their corner, saying, “To go through something like that and to have someone like them by our side has been amazing. Stew has — went above and beyond, and I feel like that’s his type of personality. Stew, when he sets his mind and his heart on something, and he sees that it needs to change, or he sees that something needs to get done, he gets the job done.”
Along with being one of the first on the scene, Hines told Fox News Digital that the state legislator had prayed over her daughter in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. “And so to think that he is running for Congress, I’m like, of course you’re running for Congress, and of course you’re going to be amazing at it. I have no doubt in my mind.”
For his part, Jones, who has been endorsed by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) and faces a crowded Republican primary field, detailed his plans toward cracking down on the driving factors of illegal border crossings. “We’ve got to go after any kind of nonprofit, any kind of program that’s supporting and encouraging this illegal activity. Second and probably most importantly, we’ve got to complete the wall.”
“The third piece to this puzzle — we’ve got to work with local law enforcement in order to identify and deport those who are here illegally,” he contended, having indicated that Arteaga had been deported under former President Donald Trump only to return under Biden. “I want to make sure that those who have committed crimes stand trial, and the ones that haven’t, that are here illegally, we need to get them out of here.”
Should no candidate surpass the 50% threshold during the June 11 primary, a runoff would occur on June 25.
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Author: Kevin Haggerty
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