Biden Border Policies Are Working Fine — For the Cartels
By Jessica M. Vaughan on February 5, 2024
In July 2023, in an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, when pressed about the results of the newly expanded CBP One program in stemming the flow of illegal migration, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely — even within our fundamentally broken immigration system — is working.”
But working for whom?
The open border most certainly is working out well for certain special interests: employers who want to hire the migrants at lower wages, government contractors cashing in on contracts to shelter and transport the migrants, and governments in the sending countries that depend on the millions of dollars in remittances. Most of all, it is working for the drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations who now control the border.
Illegal immigration now far exceeds legal immigration. As a result, the cartels are reaping unprecedented profits from human and drug smuggling and trafficking, to the tune of $30 million a day, or nearly $1 billion a month, according to a House Budget Committee report. They use the funds to acquire more sophisticated weapons and technology to solidify control over their territories in Mexico and beyond. More worrisome for the long term, however, is the way the cartels are using this cash cow to underwrite an expansion of their operations within the United States. This expansion presents profound implications for public safety in communities across the nation that will persist for years into the future, and will require a much more a concerted effort and inventive new strategies.
https://cis.org/Vaughan/Biden-Border-Policies-Are-Working-Fine-Cartels
