Forget drugs. Biden’s open border lets Mexican cartels make more cash trafficking PEOPLE nowadays
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Mexico’s criminal cartels today make more money from human trafficking than from drugs, exploiting the Biden administration’s lax border security and forcing migrants into years of debt service, a former Texas councilor warns.
Jaeson Jones, a retired Texas Department of Public Safety captain, told a think tank that the US cannot handle the threat from heavily armed Mexican gangs like the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.
He described a “tectonic shift” in the operations of the cartels, which have made some $13 billion by smuggling migrants across the border and making them repay a transit debt once they start earning wages in the US.
His comments, broadcast in a podcast echoes that of US border guards speaking to DailyMail.com on a recent visit to the border in El Paso, Texas, when a steady stream of migrants crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in.
Like legislation proposed by Republican Senators Roger Marshall and Rick Scott, Jones says the Biden administration should designate the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist groups — as has been done with ISIS and Al Qaeda — in order to better counter their activities.
While visiting the border, DailyMail.com saw a steady stream of migrants crossing the Rio Grande on foot, from Mexico to the US, before surrendering to border guards
Migrants cross the Rio Grande River from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico to El Paso, in the US Jaeson Jones, a former Texas police officer, says they must repay a debt owed to the cartels that helped them to the border
A U.S. Border Patrol agent detains immigrants who crossed the Mexico border on Sept. 28, 2022, near the All-American Canal near Yuma, Arizona
Jaeson Jones, a retired Texas Department of Public Safety captain, says cartels are smuggling more drugs than people today
“We have literally hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Gulf Cartel territory,” Jones said in a podcast broadcast by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
“They didn’t have the money to pay up front. So now they are indebted to these cartels. So they cross that river, they get to enter the United States, the federal government then sends these people to every state in the country. Yet they are indebted to a criminal organization abroad for years, if not decades.’
US border guards grapple with a wave of migrants crossing from Mexico. Authorities have stopped migrants from October to August 2.15 million times, the first time the figure has surpassed 2 million during the government’s fiscal year.
It was a 39 percent increase from 1.54 million stops in the same period a year earlier. August is the last month for which data is available.
Border crossings have been fueled in part by repeated border crossings, as there are no legal consequences if you are expelled under a pandemic rule that denies the right to asylum. Still, the numbers are very high.
About a decade ago, local mobs charged migrants as little as $100 to cross the border, Jones said.
Today, Mexicans have to pocket $2,500 and migrants from Central America $3,000. Those from China will pay $5,000 and Russians and Middle Easterners will have to pay $9,000, he added.
The gangs and their so-called “coyote” smuggling experts charge more to transport people to and across the border. According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the latest influx comes mainly from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Cartel gangsters call migrants the “gift that keeps on giving” because they have to pay the wages they earn in the US, Jones said.
They use the money to acquire military-grade weapons, buy off Mexican politicians and, in some cases, run “parallel governments” in the areas effectively under their control, Jones said.
Human trafficking cartels’ revenues have risen from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion this year, estimates Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency that investigates such cases, according to estimates by Homeland Security Investigations. The New York Times.
The cartels are now multibillion-dollar complicated international operations, with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) each operating in at least 50 countries, Jones said.
Authorities have stopped migrants from October to August 2.15 million times, the first time the figure has surpassed 2 million during the government’s fiscal year. August is the last month for which data is available
A Haitian family crosses the Rio Grande River from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico to El Paso, in the US, assisted by a Customs and Border Protection officer
Migrants detained at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) being treated along the border with Mexico, where many are seeking asylum
They are equipped with assault rifles bought in American stores and smuggled back across the border, as well as everything from belted machine guns from Central America and Russian-made rocket-propelled grenades, he added.
“They’re here, and the failures on the southwestern border are being felt across this country, in all possible forms,” Jones said.
Grains were seen on Wednesday in the violence-ravaged southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, where 18 people were killed in a shootout between rival gangs, including a mayor, Mexican authorities said Thursday.
Organized crime groups La Familia Michoacana and Los Tequileros were found to be involved.
Jones called on the US to designate cartels as foreign terrorist groups, making it illegal for individuals to assist them, freeze their assets, halt their international money flows and block members’ access to America.
The White House did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
The administration of US President Joe Biden is urging other countries in America to accommodate more people fleeing their homes.
DailyMail.com visited El Paso to see the immigration crisis firsthand. It helps more than 500 migrants board buses to New York and Chicago every day and helps with travel plans elsewhere in the US
El Paso moved its migrant problem to a processing facility on the outskirts of the city. DailyMail.com witnessed lines of immigrants – mostly young men, but also many families – waiting to board the buses for the next stage of their journey
About 6.8 million people have left Venezuela since an economic crisis erupted in the country of 28 million in 2014. Most have gone to nearby countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including more than 2.4 million in neighboring Colombia.
Venezuelan migration to the US declined sharply early this year after Mexico restricted air traffic, but has increased in recent months as more come overland through Panama’s notoriously dangerous Darien Gap jungle area.
Republican governors of Texas, Arizona and Florida — Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey, and Ron DeSantis — have made headlines by busing or flying migrants to Democrat-run areas of the northern U.S. to raise awareness of the crisis. bring.
Yet even Democrat-led governments like Texas border town El Paso transport thousands of migrants to Chicago and New York, calling it only a “humanitarian” mission, a DailyMail.com survey found.
U.S. voters favor Republicans over Democrats for solving immigration and crime problems, suggesting Republican emphasis on border security could help her in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, an Ipsos poll this week found.
Forty percent of registered voters said Republicans were the party best suited to tackle immigration, compared with 32 percent selected Democrats, according to the survey of 4,415 adults between Sept. 27 and Oct. 3.
Rising inflation remains a major concern for American voters, but crime and immigration are seen as key issues in motivating key Republican supporters to vote — and win over independents and moderate Democrats.