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Mexican Cartels Gaining Operational Control of US Border: Texas Legislator

Jonathan Walker
Jonathan loves talking politics, economics and philosophy. He carries unique perspectives on everything making him a rather odd mix of liberal-conservative with a streak of independent Austrian thought.
Published: February 1, 2022
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Downtown El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico are pictured from a rooftop in downtown El Paso, Texas on November 5, 2021. (Image: PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images)

Mexican cartels have gained operational control over U.S. borders, Republican Representative Chip Roy from Texas recently warned. These cartels are gaining billions of dollars from illegal activities like human smuggling and drug trafficking. Over the past year, the cartels have seen an increase in profits. 

Illegal immigrants often have to pay large sums to the cartels to get themselves inside the U.S. Those who cannot afford to pay such vast sums have no choice but to put themselves into slave labor or sex trade to benefit the cartels. Roy pointed to a recent case of eight illegal immigrants found in a vehicle in Texas.

“The driver of the car was an American citizen employee of one of those cartels, moving those eight people—two of whom were bound in the trunk—heading to a stash house in Houston… How is the most powerful nation in the history of the world allowing our borders to be operationally controlled by cartels, while Democrats pat themselves on the back for compassion, using asylum as an excuse for wide-open borders that do nothing good for the American people?” Roy said in an interview with NTD’s Capitol Report.

The Republican lawmaker also highlighted the drug menace of the Mexican cartels. Border seizures of synthetic opioids like fentanyl have increased in recent years, as have the number of overdose deaths. 

Roy notes that almost 100,000 Americans die from opioid poisoning. China supplies the opioids to cartels in Mexico which then sells them in the U.S. In this way, China gets “empowered” while America ends up “getting hammered,” Roy stated. 

Lax border security

Roy blamed the crisis on what he called the Biden administration’s disinterest in securing America’s borders.

In April last year, Roy visited the Texas border in a fact-finding mission amidst the border crisis. The visit made him realize that most Americans do not fully understand the influence Mexican cartels have in border areas. Even the Mexican government forces are useless in the region, he stated.

“The word has gotten out that Border Patrol is now distracted… What does that mean? You don’t have patrols going out and stopping the flow between the ports of entry. So now we have fentanyl up, pounds of marijuana up, human smuggling between ports of entry up, and that is kind of where your bad guys are generally coming. This is the state of our border,” Roy said in an interview with Breitbart.

The issue regarding the safety of borders is something that other lawmakers have also raised several times. In a recent interview with Fox News, Arizona Governor Republican Doug Ducey stated that there is a correlation between unchecked migrant admissions and a rise in crime rates in several American cities. In addition, drugs and children are being trafficked via the borders. He called the Biden administration the “marketing arm” of the Mexican cartels.

“We don’t know who we’re not catching. These people are coming from 120-plus countries, including countries that harbor terrorists… So, of course we could have something terrible happen to our nation by this lack of attention to the federal border. But we could also just have this crime, violence, vandalism, and murder that we see. So, there’s no doubt about it that there’s a link to it,” Ducey said.

In a Jan. 27 border security briefing, Texas Governor Republican Greg Abbott revealed that Mexican cartels are using TikTok to advertise and recruit smugglers in Texas, Houston, San Antonio, and other cities in Texas and possibly other states. The cartels use TikTok to smuggle people and to make payments. 

“TikTok should be ashamed, condemned, and have a legal action brought against it for promoting human trafficking in Texas and the United States of America,” Abbott said.