'Bad hombres': how Trump inspired one former CBP officer to leave Democratic party

A retired Border Patrol officer who left the Democratic party said she became a Republican after watching the media attack former President Donald Trump, who took steps to connect with the immigration issue that few national politicians had.

Retired CBP officer Rosa Arellano told Fox & Friends on Monday that she became skeptical of the mainstream media in 2016 after realizing their coverage of then-candidate Trump was extremely biased and looked for more independent information.

“I knew that he had people that either loved him or hated him because he was pretty much a celebrity at the time,” she told host Carley Shimkus.

Born and raised in El Rio, Texas, Arellano was not bothered by Trump’s “bad hombres” remark in his final debate with then-candidate Hillary Clinton because of her experience on the border.

“I was working as a CBP officer at the time and was at the camera room when I listened to that clip. I heard it in its entirety,” Arellano recalled.

“I didn’t think much about it… as it being racist or what have you because I’ve worked as a CBP officer and I did encounter my share of ‘bad hombres.’”

The former officer said she switched parties after watching Democrats and the media attack his proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, which she said was part of a “multi-layered” solution championed by the CBP during one of his visits to the area.

"He was the first president in a long time that I recall actually came down to the border," Arellano said. "When he came down, and he spoke to the subject-matter experts of Border Patrol and us, the CBP officers, he listened to us.”

She continued: "He listened to us letting him know that we needed a multi-layer solution to this situation. And we mentioned that we needed physical barriers, strategic locations, we needed better infrastructure, we needed more boots on the ground and better technology. He listened to us, and he pointed it out to the country."

Arellano called Democratic mayors labeling the influx of migrants to their cities a “crisis” “pure hypocrisy” when thousands flood border towns every day.

"If they come down and they check out what's going on, they would be baffled,” she said.” We have our small border town that is just about 30,000-35,000. It's ridiculous that we're getting illegals entering our area at a rate of about a thousand a day."

The Democrat-led border city of El Paso, Texas, is seeing 1,000 to 1,400 new migrants daily, a local NGO told Fox News earlier this month.