A group of Tennessee Republican lawmakers pushed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday to explain how an illegal immigrant accused of raping multiple children was allowed to stay in the U.S. for two decades.

The Republicans, led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas accusing his agency of failing to enforce American immigration laws and contributing to the alleged crimes.

“We write to express our disgust with this administration’s complete failure to secure our border and enforce the rule of law, the effects of which are impacting communities and families across the country,” the letter says.

Blackburn was joined by Reps. Diana Harshbarger, Tim Burchett, Chuck Fleischmann, Scott DesJarlais, Andy Ogles, Mark Green, and John Rose.

The letter referred to the case of Camilo Hurtado Campos, a youth soccer coach and illegal immigrant living in Franklin, Tennessee. Police say they found “disturbing videos and pictures” on documenting the “rapes of at least 10 children” ages 9 to 17 on Campos phone, which he accidentally left at a restaurant, according to The Tennessean.

“We fear that, in addition to very recent victims, there could be a decade or more of victims out there,” Franklin Police Department Lt. Charles Warner said last week. More people have since stepped forward and said they were victimized by Campos, who is being held in custody on charges of child rape and sexual exploitation of a minor.

“Perhaps most devastating of all, this horrific abuse was entirely preventable — police confirmed on July 12 that Campos is an illegal immigrant who should not have been in our country in the first place,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter on Monday. “Indeed, if this administration had any interest in enforcing our nation’s laws, he wouldn’t have been.”

Campos had been in trouble with the police before, according to the letter. He had been cited for public intoxication and three instances of driving without a license. Despite his run-ins with law enforcement, police said Campos has lived in the Franklin area for about two decades through multiple administrations.

The lawmakers requested more information from the DHS on Campos’s case, including whether the department was aware of Campos and his immigration status as well as whether the department ever initiated any enforcement actions against him. The GOP letter asks for a response from the secretary by July 24.

“Violence against children is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and Tennesseans deserve to know why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) permitted this criminal to live in their community and abuse their children after entering the country illegally,” the letter says.

Mayorkas has received an intense criticism from Republicans for his handling of the U.S. southern border crisis, punctuated by a peak of roughly 10,000 apprehensions a day for a period of time in May. Some members have even pushed for Mayorkas to be impeached.

House Oversight Committee lawmakers are set to hold a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) next week.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), a member of the panel who has helped drive the conversation about UFOs on Capitol Hill, said a hearing will be held on Wednesday, July 26.

“We’re done with the cover-ups,” he added in a tweet.

The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on UAPs on Wednesday, 7/26.

We're done with the cover-ups.

— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) July 17, 2023

It was not immediately clear who has been invited to be a witness at the hearing, and as of press time it does not appear on the Oversight Committee’s online calendar.

But Burchett previewed the hearing last week along with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), another member of the committee, according to ABC News.

“We’re going to have professionals in here, and we’re getting blowback from some of the alphabet agencies,” Burchett told reporters.

“I’m sick of government … that does not trust the people,” he also said.

David Grusch, a U.S. military veteran who served as a combat officer in Afghanistan and a former intelligence official, revealed to The Debrief in a report published early last month that he gave classified information to the Intelligence Community inspector general and Congress. He claims the disclosure shows some programs have retrieved craft of non-human origin, and this information has been illegally kept from Congress.

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch told the outlet. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

In response to the claims, the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) tasked with investigating UAPs said it has “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick said in May that his office was reviewing about 800 cases of UAP cases, a jump from 650 he mentioned during a hearing in April when he said only a “small percentage” of the objects studied by his team displayed signatures that could be reasonably described as “anomalous” and none of them presented “credible” evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emphasized the gravity Grusch’s claim during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last week.

“We have people that have very high clearances both today and in the past, who did really important work for our government or continue to do important work for the government, who have come forward with some claims about the U.S. having in the past recovered exotic materials and then reversed engineered those materials to make advances in our own defenses and technologies,” Rubio said.

“Either they’re telling the truth, and that is something that obviously would be the biggest story in human history, or we have people in really important positions in government who are crazy, and who are out there making up stories, and who are still in positions of importance,” Rubio said. “Either one is a big problem. So we’ve got to figure out which one of these two it is, because the second one in particular would be very troubling.”

Rubio and other lawmakers are now pushing legislation to bring forth UAP disclosures from the government.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told reporters on Monday that he supports letting the American people “see what we have, where we go.”

“I’d love to see whatever facts and information we have,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said if the U.S. military found such evidence of a UFO, “the Department of Defense would tell us because they would probably want to request more money.”