Juan Feria is headed into the primary election looking to become the Republican candidate for U.S. House District 32.
The district has a population of nearly 800,000 and has been represented by Colin Allred for the past five years. Allred will not be seeking re-election as he is running in the Democratic primary to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate.
The Dallas Express had an opportunity to speak with Feria about the border and his take on the lack of oversight and accountability within the federal government.
Feria grew up on the Texas border along the Rio Grande on his grandparents’ ranch, where hard work was the norm rather than the exception. As a boy, he remembers throwing hay from the back of his grandfather’s pickup to feed the livestock. In addition to the work ethic his grandparents taught him, Feria explained that he also learned “what’s important in life — what being rich is truly about, which is more about immaterial wealth.”
“Growing up along the border, I had a unique perspective of what that area looked like before we had this crisis we are seeing now,” explained Feria. Starr County was the poorest county in Texas, Feria noted, and Roma, the Starr County town where he resided, is situated across from Ciudad Miguel Alemán in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Compared to how the area looked when he was growing up, Feria said that the area “doesn’t look much different, except now there are more [people].”
“What the cartels did is they would cross a couple dozen mules from one side of the border with drugs. [The cartels] would call the Border Patrol or police themselves, and while law enforcement was tending to that situation, a couple of miles down the road, the cartels would be transporting the real haul — so it was a distraction,” explained Feria.
Feria knows how operations at the border work because he has extensive knowledge in the areas of customs and immigration enforcement, as well as experience in anti-terrorism work. Feria served in the U.S. Marine Corps for a decade, holds a master’s degree in Homeland Security, and pursued studies in British and American intelligence and security at Cambridge University.
As such, Feria uses his experience and knowledge to speak to three issues at the border: national security, humanitarian issues, and public safety.
With regards to national security at the border, Feria said, “We have a lot of proxy wars around the world with a lot of hostile nations trying to take advantage of the situation.”
Touching on the humanitarian crisis at the border, Feria noted that “human trafficking is out of control.”
“Everyone screams that we need a wall,” but the wall will not solve the bigger monetary issues, he said.
“What is happening is we are spending tens of billions of dollars along with other states on this crisis, and it is unsustainable,” said Feria.
“The Pentagon has not passed an audit in over six years. That amounts to $3.8 trillion in cash and about $4 trillion in assets. That is a lot of money to be losing,” explained Feria, who believes we have a transparency issue with the government.
Feria pointed to the July 26 Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing of 2023, which he attended, as another example of transparency and public safety concerns.
“The topic of UFOs was brought up by very credible individuals, under oath,” said Feria. “I’m talking about commanders of carriers in the Navy, intelligence officers that were so highly cleared that they delivered the intelligence briefing to the Oval Office, and naval aviators. What they said was that our government has been hiding secrets for 80 years.”
Feria noted that both Republicans and Democrats agreed that the information brought to light in the hearing was highly concerning.
“The National Defense Authorization Act, which was recently passed, is the federal government’s budget that provides money for troops, salary increases, the Department of Defense, Pentagon, and every single agency. … One thing that was holding this budget act back was a clause, an amendment inserted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and approved by the White House and Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), called the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act,” Feria explained.
“What is important about this situation is that in the hearing, three people in intelligence said that the United States government has murdered Americans to maintain secrets without due process,” he said.
“This tells us there is a rogue element of the United States government comprised of both the private sector, including executives and former military members, and active duty military members of the military intelligence community. A rogue element of the government that is doing things outside government oversight.”
“When you get into the nitty-gritty,” Feria explained, “you have billions of dollars appropriated to the federal government through the National Defense Authorization Act that we pass every year, but a lot of these fund go to special vehicles called IRADS that end up in companies for special programs and to create paramilitary forces that are acting outside of government oversight. Once [the funds] are converted to an IRAD, there is no government oversight.”
Feria noted that this is a critical issue, referring back to the hearing in which “whistleblowers under oath were saying, “‘Oh by the way, my job was to track this to investigate where the money was going, and I uncovered all of this: murders, misspending, and misappropriated money.’”
“This means that democracy is broken,” claimed Feria. “Congress should have complete oversight over everything headed to our military services. The military reports to civilians in the world of democracy in this Republic. We are not like every other nation on earth where we report to an oligarchy or a regime and do not give the people transparency.”
“We have to figure out how to fix this corruption,” he said, addressing the federal government’s lack of transparency and oversight.
Feria also raised concerns about the distribution of funds in another specific context: the intense urban combat in 2004 that took place in Fallujah, known as “Operation Phantom Fury.”
The candidate explained that during his first of three combat tours in Iraq, he was in this battle — which is considered one of the most significant and challenging military operations the United States has been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968 — as a U.S. Marine.
“We had terrible equipment,” said Feria, noting soldiers’ flimsy flap jackets and subpar vehicles. “We really just had to take care of each other and be fully aware of what was going on at all times to protect one another.”
“The Marine Corps’ budget this year is about $54.8 billion,” said Fiera, noting that the U.S. Senate recently passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill, with $60 billion going to support Ukraine. “Think about this: You could create an entire Marine Corps force for Ukraine plus more and sustain it for an entire year — food, lodging, personnel, equipment, weapons, ammunition … everything. That is exactly what the Marine Corps will use its budget for this year.”
“Where is the oversight and accountability? We are not prioritizing the key things we need to prioritize as a nation,” said Feria. “We need to react appropriately by strategically prioritizing our initiatives and assessing how much money we are sending abroad, including to South America and Mexico.”
“We have to take care of our borders. We have to take the posture that we are at war for the defense of our nation,” added Feria.
Feria cautioned that whether it is due to internal or external strife, we are “just one bad decision away from complete implosion as a nation” and that he is running to address and make changes in the issues that put our country at risk.
Note: This article was updated on February 23, 2024, at 11:17 a.m. to include additional commentary from Feria.