Tiffany Hartley, the wife of the man reportedly shot by “lake pirates” on the Texas-Mexico border, has been all over the media in recent days, telling her harrowing tale. Hartley has also been calling on the federal government to take more responsibility for the incident.
“They need to have a realization, a wake-up call,” Ms. Hartley told KURV this week, according to The Christian Science Monitor. “We need to get people down here. We need to get our Army and military and whoever. We need to double our Border Patrol and take back the lake. Why in the heck do [the cartels] have [control of] that lake? They have most of that lake.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry made a more general argument along the same lines on Fox News yesterday. Perry said the incident “is a result of many years of disregard for the people along that border, and the security of the border. We’ve been telling this administration, and administrations before, for years, that there is not enough support, there’s not enough boots on the ground, there’s not enough technology in place — aviation assets — to protect the citizens of the United States — and Mexico for that matter.”
On Good Morning America this morning, Hartley argued that those who have doubted her story “don’t understand” the reality on the ground in Mexico or on the border.
“It’s hard, it’s just hard to believe that they don’t believe me, you know,” Hartley said. “It’s a story that most people don’t understand. That pirates would be on a lake. That the cartels are taking over Mexico. It’s a story that people don’t understand unless they’re on that border. Then they don’t understand what’s going on down there.”
Asked if authorities were providing her with the appropriate amount of support. She said yes, on the local level, but she still wanted to see involvement from a higher federal level.
“From some,” she said. “The people that we saw yesterday, the state representatives, they’re fully behind us. Asking us what they need, and what we need to do. I think we just need to make it up the ladder a little bit, even all the way up to Obama. We really need to get, you know, U.S. and Mexico working together.”
