President Joe Biden’s lax enforcement of immigration laws and the southern border has, for all intents and purposes, effectively ceded control of that region to the Mexican drug cartels and their transnational smuggling operations.
That means, according to newly elected Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX), that the cartels have free rein to smuggle drugs and migrants across the border, which includes incidents of violence and sexual assault, including rape, against an unknown number of female migrants, Breitbart reported.
Making matters worse, it appears that Biden’s administration is well aware of this grimly dangerous reality at the southern border but has done little, if anything, to actually address the problems.
Time to “defund the cartels” to protect Americans and migrants
It was during a recent Spanish-language interview with Breitbart News that Rep. Flores, who recently flipped Texas’ 34th District from blue to red and became the first Mexican-born woman to serve in Congress, stated, “We need to defund the cartels.”
“Unfortunately, we have a border that is in control of criminal organizations,” the congresswoman said in reference to the two major Mexican drug cartels that have effectively gained operational control of the southern border region, most notably the Gulf Cartel and an offshoot of the Los Zetas Cartel known as the Cartel Del Noreste.
“It is a sad reality, but no one can cross the border into this country without having to pay thousands of dollars to criminal organizations,” Flores said, and called out her fellow politicians in Washington D.C. for too often ignoring the dangers faced by migrants under the control of the cartels and smuggling operations.
That includes instances of violence and horrors that are most often targeted at women and children, including rapes and sexual assaults, as well as kidnappings for ransom and even murder.
“It is something that is happening that in reality, it embarrasses me that it is happening in this country because we are better than that,” Flores lamented. She went on to suggest that strengthening border security and streamlining the process for legal immigration would work to reduce illegal immigration and drug smuggling and, in effect, defund the cartels of a major source of revenue.
“I believe that we need to secure our border and to help good people come here legally,” Flores added. “Where there is a safe process also where people can come without having to go through, like I said before, without having to go through hell.”
Biden WH knows about sexual abuse of migrants, cartel control of border region
To be sure, there have long been allegations of rapes and sexual assaults against migrant women during the journey northward through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S., but accurate figures on the prevalence of such crimes are difficult to determine, as was made clear in a 2019 “fact-check” from The Washington Post over allegedly misleading claims made by then-President Donald Trump.
As for Flores’ claim that the cartels are now effectively in control of the border region, that is a reality that is known by the Biden administration and was revealed in May by way of a leaked internal document from the Department of Homeland Security, according to The Center Square.
That document stated that “smuggling networks are very active in promoting the flow of migrants through Mexico as drug trafficking organizations maintain control of the primary trafficking corridors into the United States. The drug trafficking organizations’ control of these corridors allows them to regulate the flow of migrants as well as charge migrants a ‘tax’ … for the right to pass through the corridors,” and added, “Transnational criminal organizations will exploit migration flows and entrench themselves in the smuggling cycle. TCOs endanger vulnerable individuals, amass illicit profits that feed cartel violence in Mexico and along the border, and create a volatile border environment.”
