Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was the victim of a carjacking at gunpoint in Washington, D.C., on Monday night, according to White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López, who reported the news on X (formerly known as Twitter). According to Barrón-López, the carjacking was committed by three people outside Cuellar’s apartment building in D.C. According to Cuellar’s chief of staff, Jacob Hochberg, the congressman was unharmed during the incident.
NEWS: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was carjacked at gunpoint tonight outside his apartment building in DC, multiple sources confirm to me. And Cuellar is safe they say
— Laura Barrón-López (@lbarronlopez) October 3, 2023
His car was recovered approximately an hour later.
Cuellar’s office released the following statement overnight:
As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, 3 armed assailants approached the Congressman and stole his vehicle. Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement. Thank you to Metro PD and Capitol Police for their swift action and for recovering the Congressman’s vehicle.
A member of Congress told Axios that they were shocked by the carjacking because many lawmakers have apartments in the building and because of the Capitol Police presence there.
Cuellar, whose district is on the southern border with Mexico, has often tried to distance himself from the Defund the Police movement, even accusing his Democrat challenger in 2022 of wanting to “defund the police and border patrol, which would wreck our local economy.” But Cuellar’s record shows that he’s been a supporter of the movement.
In 2021, the National Republican Congressional Committee blasted Cuellar for refusing to condemn the Defund the Police movement. “Henry Cuellar won’t condemn the Defund the Police movement because he can’t afford to lose their support,” NRCC Spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair said at the time.
Cuellar also voted against an amendment to remove language from a spending bill that would have removed language that made it easier to defund police departments. “As crime continues to rise across the country, Texans won’t forgot [sic] that Henry Cuellar voted to make it easier to defund the police departments that keep them safe,” Sinclair said of Cuellar’s vote.
Cuellar also supported the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, which, according to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation, would “take away tools that help keep police officers safe by limiting the ability of local law enforcement agencies to receive surplus military equipment, and it bans the use of no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level and prohibits state and local governments that allow them from receiving certain federal grants.”
The bill also eliminated the defense of making a split-second decision for law enforcement officers accused of violating someone’s rights, which could potentially lead to an increase in frivolous lawsuits against police officers and departments. The bill also essentially endorsed racial profiling by forcing police departments to “consider protected characteristics, such as race or gender, of an individual when engaging in most law enforcement interactions.”
The bill never made it through the evenly divided Senate.
There’s a saying that “a Republican is a Democrat who’s been mugged by reality.” Hopefully, Cuellar and other Democrats will have a deeper appreciation for the police who protect them now.
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