WASHINGTON, DC, Sep12 — A one-way airline ticket from Mexico City to Dallas, TX costs as little as $129. But the cartels charge as much as $15,000 to smuggle an illegal immigrant into the U.S. For the Mexican cartels, it’s “a billion dollar industry that rivals the profitability of trafficking illegal drugs,” according to the Border Report.
The cartels have President Biden to thank for this largess; his “come one, come all” campaign message to illegal migrants resonated so well that it gave them yet another mega-source of income.
The year before Mr. Biden’s election, the border patrol caught 487 illegal migrants at the border. In his first year as president, more than 3,200 migrants were apprehended and their numbers have skyrocketed ever since. So far in the current fiscal year — with two months to go — a staggering 2.75 million migrants, including any number of so-called “gotaways,” have been clocked seeking to cross the Mexican border. The cartels use a growing number of them to smuggle narcotics. They are also using the surge of migrants to smuggle individuals seeking covert entry for whatever reason if they have enough cash.
Business has been so good that they are posting “help wanted” ads on social media looking for Americans “in desperate circumstances” to provide transportation once they cross the border.
Michael Salinas, a former Border Patrol agent, says the cartels use YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and TikTok to enlist people who want to make a dishonest buck, according to a report by The Daily Signal. “All the social media platforms are being used to recruit these folks. And it’s not always just the young kids, it’s just folks that want to make a quick buck.” But, he said, “They tend to recruit a lot of the younger crowd, because they know that the young kids are going to avoid prosecution [when caught], regardless of whether they have aliens or if they have narcotics as juveniles.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says that “videos encouraging” young volunteers “to participate in human smuggling across the southern border are highly concerning. With the issuance of Civil Investigative Demands, my office is currently combing through TikTok company policies and getting to the bottom of what is happening in these social media posts,” according to the Washington Examiner.
Sheriff Brad Coe in Kinney County, TX told the Examiner that the cartel recruitment technique is simple but compelling. One ad just said, “Anyone looking to make easy money, contact us. [All you have to do is] Go to south Texas to pick up some people. We’ll give you $1,000 a head … We’ve had kids from broken homes with mom working two jobs and dads in jail. The lure of easy money is what does it. They get anywhere from $500 to $2,000 a head. The cartels will give them an address and say, ‘Pull up here and honk your horn twice’.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Individuals seeking covert entry into the United States know they need to pay an organization for transport. Smuggling organizations, often associated with other transnational criminal organizations and able to take advantage of people in desperate circumstances, provide that transportation at a significant cost.”
The anonymous owner of a private investigation company in Arizona that deals with border security issues summed it up for The Epoch Times recently: “To anyone who’s anti-border and anti-wall, why is it only we are the bad guys? What other nation has open borders as we do? If I cross the border into Mexico, I will get arrested and go to a Mexican prison. And they’re going to keep me there. And the [U.S.] State Department will have to argue to get me back and free me.”