Dakota Beacon

In 2021 Texas saw a record 2 million migrants cross the US southern border illegally. A few carried enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in Texas, California, New York, Illinois, and Florida combined. One cannot massage the numbers away. "It's just astonishing that we have a president who is failing to step up and do anything about it," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Fox Business 1/28/22. "The president has to…do something about this."

Most people sympathize with those fleeing oppressive regimes and crushing economic hardship. For years America served as a beacon of hope for the disadvantaged. A rational process of regulating the flow and screening of immigrants was implemented and enforced to the advantage of all. Now, by political design, the Biden administration abandoned that process without explanation. Opening the borders with no restraint encourages ne’er-do-wells to take advantage of that botched program. Examples follow.

-- DRUGS. Cartels from Mexico and other Latin-American countries with corrupt governments take advantage of weak law enforcement and policy failures. Record amounts of the lethal drug fentanyl easily flow into the United States. Cartels sponsor the surges freely entering Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California bringing fentanyl. Meanwhile, agents are distracted from apprehending and processing the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants properly.

Fentanyl caused over 93,000 deaths in the United States in 2021 -- nearly five times the murder rate in that same year. The highly lethal synthetic opioid is manufactured by Mexican cartels. The ingredients are imported from China. Cartels then use illegal immigrants to smuggle the drug over the southwestern U.S. border.

-- TERRORISTS. Terrorists mingle among the migrant surges and only a handful are ever caught and identified. An unknown number already reside in the US and we have no way of knowing who they are or how many more come each day mixed in with the illegals. Between January 20 and December 27, 2021 the names of 23 individuals who attempted to come across the border illegally matched individuals on the Terrorist Screening Database. This database compiles information about individuals who are either known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorism. Among the massive numbers of illegals getting through the border without apprehension, the probability exists that some are terrorists. Of those apprehended in November 2021 alone terrorists were identified from Syria, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and African Eritrea.

And the White House response? The White House downplayed the terror threat. Jen Psaki’s responded on 4/18/22 to a reporter’s question as follows. "He’s [the President’s] grateful to the Border Patrol for doing their job and stopping these people and preventing them from getting into the country," she said. "Suspected terrorists attempting to cross the southern border, they're very uncommon. We're talking about a few dozen annual encounters at most." Nothing to see here. How many unidentified terrorists mingling in the migrant surges and slipping into the US illegally would it take to constitute a national security threat, Jen? Silly question.

-- HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Then there is the issue of human trafficking. The perpetrator of human trafficking seeks to make a buck and does so by various means. Once again the cartels come into play and they do not tolerate competition.

Tools of the cartels include violence, manipulation, false promises of well-paying jobs, declarations of romantic intent, and more. They seek out susceptible people including the psychologically or emotionally vulnerable and those facing economic hardship, natural disasters, or political instability. The crudest use of human beings is to lease the sexual services of the victim. Beyond that, selling a person for forced involuntary servitude (slavery) keeps a victim in bondage indefinitely. A cash-flow variation of slavery, debt bondage, forces the victim to reimburse to the cartel for fees for transportation, boarding, food, interest on the debt, fines for missing payments, and charges for poor conduct or performance. Typically, the victim is trapped in a debt that may never be repaid. This results in peonage (from the root “peon”) meaning permanent involuntary servitude. Finally, there is true slavery where the victim is owned by the cartel to do its bidding.

Whether senility, bad advice, or incompetence on the part of President Biden and his administration, the results are the same. Tragedy!

Most of us are familiar with the litany cited above. November is coming. Might elections bring change?

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).