More than one million migrants will try to push through the southern border this year, warns a former senior official in former President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The 78,000 arrivals in January were “nearly double the figure for the same month last year and the highest for January in a decade,” Juliette Kayyem wrote in a January 18 article for the Atlantic. “If the current pattern holds, the U.S. is on track for more than 1 million encounters in 2021.”
One million migrants adds up to roughly one migrant for every four Americans who turn 18 this year.
Kayyem’s warning, however, is not about the impact on many millions of Americans whose wages and neighborhoods face damage from the government-delivered flow of workers, buyers, and renters to the U.S. consumer economy. “People who are fleeing persecution and violence deserve refuge,” she insists as senior lecturer of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Instead, her concern seems to be that the flood of migrants will prompt American voters to step in and reassert control of the border which has now been delegated to Biden’s team of ethnic advocacy groups, open-borders progressives, and corporate allies.
That intervention would be bad for Harvard because it would likely derail Biden’s amnesty bill — a bill includes a massive giveaway to the elite university sector.
The Biden bill, if passed, would effectively allow Harvard and other universities to recruit fee-paying foreign students by offering an unlimited number of work permits — complete with a 15-year “path to citizenship .” In effect, the bill allows the universities to train fee-paying foreigners to take the careers the universities’ American graduates need. Kayyem cautiously tries to blame the flood on the progressive wing of the Democrats. She wrote:
Many Democratic candidates during the 2020 presidential-primary season supported decriminalization of unlawful border crossings, and activists and officials on the party’s progressive flank support the outright abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both positions, however, are unpopular among an American public.
The Democrats’ support for the migrant flood is very unpopular across a wide range of American society.
Yet Kayyem offers no plan to reduce the approaching migrant flood that threatens the giveaway to Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League. Instead, she pleads from Boston, saying “for the moment, the United States’ humanitarian interest lies not just in showing kindness to those who reach the border, but also in stemming the flow of people who undertake the journey in the first place.”
“Biden will have more maneuvering room, both operationally and politically, if he succeeds in signaling to migrants that they should not travel to the border immediately — and that an easing of Trump’s policies is not the same as an unconditional welcome,” she concludes.
Correction Note: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated Kayyem was “head” of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kayyem is a senior lecturer there and the article has been updated to reflect that.
I t’s Joe Biden’s border crisis now.
Tens of thousands of migrants are surging across Mexico toward the U.S. frontier, most of them desperate Mexicans and Central Americans drawn by internet rumors and traffickers’ false promises that the new president’s immigration reforms will welcome them to settle in the United States.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials reported Thursday that they had expelled, detained, or arrested 78,323 migrants last month, up six percent from December and more than double the number in January 2020. Nearly 6,000 of the migrants intercepted by border officers trying to slip the border last month were unaccompanied children.
“It looks like we’re at the beginning of a bona fide migrant crisis like 2019,” said Todd Bensman, an Austin-based senior national security fellow with the conservative Center for Immigration Studies . “Family units, parents with children, are massing along the northern border of Mexico, then crossing in large groups, anywhere from 20 to 150 at a time, twenty-four hours, seven days a week.”
Bensman calls the migrant surge “the Biden effect” because nearly all the migrants he has interviewed along the routes from Central America and Mexico were ecstatic about the president’s campaign promises to reform the U.S. immigration system. They assumed that his victory in November meant they would soon be welcomed to resettle in the U.S., they told him.
“The escalation is so much faster than 2019,” a federal agent on the border says, speaking on terms of anonymity to discuss the politically sensitive issue. “It started getting busy in the summer. Since the inauguration, the numbers are spinning.”
“People think that now the doors are open, that President Biden is going to immediately regularize all migrants,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday, warning Central Americans not to risk the perilous trip to the border only to be turned back to gang-plagued encampments. “It is not true,” he said, “that everyone can go now to the United States.” He blamed the surge on “human traffickers, who paint a rosy picture.”
At two consecutive White House briefings this week, Biden press secretary Jen Psaki pleaded for patience.
“We have not had the time, as an administration,” she said, “to put in place a humane, comprehensive process for processing individuals who are coming to the border, now is not the time to come, and the vast majority of people will be turned away. Asylum processes at the border will not occur immediately; it will take time to implement.”
Meanwhile, though, refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Mexico and Central America may take another, more welcoming message from Biden’s formal proclamation on Thursday that put an end to ex-President Donald Trump’s 2019 declaration of a national emergency on the southwestern border . “It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall,” Biden wrote in a formal letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
The Rio Grande Valley in southeast Texas, traditionally the nation’s busiest smuggling corridor, has been hardest hit by the migrant surge. U.S. Border Patrol agents there have been apprehending more than 17,000 illegals a month since October; more than double the pace of late 2019 and early 2020. Last week, Border Patrol agents apprehended 253 illegals, mainly families with children, in the Rio Grande Valley within a single hour.
To process the throng of refugees in winter weather and pandemic conditions, on Tuesday, the administration opened a 185,000-square-foot tent facility on 40 acres near McAllen, the biggest city in the Rio Grande Valley.
Catch and Release After processing, most of those people are being sent back to Mexico to wait out their asylum hearings. But some families with young children are being released into the United States, with orders to return for asylum proceedings, a process that could take months or years.
According to federal officials, Border Patrol agents have been told to process and release families with children under 12, in line with Biden’s pledge to end the Trump administration policy of separating families and detaining illegal migrants for months or longer.
“Right now, we’re just dropping them off at the bus station,” says one agent. “No testing, no nothing. We detain them and get their biometrics. If they have a kid under 12, they get an OR [own recognizance] packet, a notice to appear [at an asylum hearing] and a pro bono lawyers list, and then we release them. They are now legally in the U.S. They can go wherever.”
Exactly how many refugees have been released into the U.S. is not clear. Psaki said Wednesday that “there have been incredibly narrow and limited circumstances where individuals…have come into the country awaiting for their hearing, but the vast majority have been… turned away.”
She did not disclose exactly how many people have enjoyed “narrow and limited” exceptions to the general policy of requiring asylum-seekers to wait for their turn abroad. CBP officials have not responded to SpyTalk ’s request for these numbers.
Nor is there solid data for “gotaways”—Border Patrol slang for illegals who evaded U.S. authorities. Internal enforcement records reviewed by SpyTalk suggest that thousands of “gotaways” disappear weekly into the U.S. heartland. Some officials say the gotaway numbers are understated because agents on the border are stretched too thin to execute the necessary paperwork.
A few national security officials fear that some of the gotaways may have been spies and terrorists, an idea that gained traction after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. So far, it hasn’t materialized as a significant national security threat, but border enforcement officials say it’s entirely possible that secret agents and terrorists trained in evasion tradecraft are successfully infiltrating the burgeoning migrant waves.
Says one federal agent: “If you’re so busy you’re not able to make cuts”—hunting slang for tracking footprints—“you have no idea what’s getting away.”
FBI and Homeland Security officials pay extra attention to people they call SIAs, or “special interest aliens ,” individuals who, “based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially [pose] a national security risk to the United States or its interests.”
From Tehran to Yuma CBP does not publish numbers for migrants in the SIA category. According to data obtained by SpyTalk , in the last half of January, federal agents in Texas apprehended two North Koreans, nine Chinese, 70 Venezuelans and more than 300 Cubans. Hundreds more Cubans are reported to be waiting to file asylum claims from encampments in Ciudad Juarez , just south of El Paso. U.S. officials have not said publicly whether any of the Cubans or other espionage or terrorism.
“You just can’t do background checks on these people,” says Arturo Fontes , a retired FBI agent formerly based in Laredo, who investigated numerous migrants suspected of links to Middle Eastern terror groups. “When you interview them, it’s difficult to tell who they really are.”
At this moment, the FBI, intelligence agencies and border control authorities are watching closely for any Iranian operatives. The radical nation’s leaders have vowed revenge against the United States for the January 2020 U.S. drone attack that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, leader of the powerful Quds Force, the external arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. On Feb. 1, Border Patrol officers based in Yuma made national headlines when they apprehended 11 Iranians —five women and six men—on a bridge near San Luis, Arizona, a Yuma suburb that straddles the border.
“The 11 Iranians that were caught were probably economic migrants, but they’ll have to be ruled out as anything else,” says Bensman, a former journalist and counterterrorism intelligence specialist for the Texas state police, and author of a forthcoming book, America’s Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration . “They’ll be thoroughly vetted and interviewed at the border.” If any are defectors, presumably they’ll be referred to the intelligence community.
The bust is intriguing because it may be part of a pattern. The U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector leads the nation in apprehensions of Iranian illegals, with a total of 14 in the current fiscal year, which began last October, and eight in fiscal year 2020. These instances suggest that southern Arizona is a preferred way station for Iranians paying to be smuggled into the U.S.
“There’s a migrant trail from Iran to the southern border that is well established,” Bensman says. Following the route back, Bensman says he found Iranians in Panama and Costa Rica, planning to travel to the U.S. They were using false or real travel documents acquired from corrupt officials in various small nations to make their way to Mexico, he says, where they planned to pay a Mexican smuggling ring to take them the last mile to the U.S.
Fontes, who also investigated the Iranian migrant trail, says he has been told by a reliable source that some Iranians fly into Cancun, a resort with many international flights, fly from there to Mexicali, just south of California, and pay cartel smugglers $30,000 to $50,000 to drive them to the border, then guide them across it.
Mexico’s human trafficking rings are highly organized, disciplined branches of larger cartels that also traffic in drugs and arms and exert rigid control over their plazas , turf.
“The cartels are in control of the border,” says Norman Townsend, another retired FBI agent, also based in Texas and experienced in investigating efforts by Middle Eastern extremist groups to send operatives into the U.S. “The potential for infiltration by a terrorist is certainly there.”
Coached Class Malign actors can arrange to be guided via the safest routes, according to agents who work the borders. Meanwhile, the cartel will send poor Central Americans by more exposed, dangerous routes. If they need to be rescued, all the better. Cartel guides exploit humanitarian emergencies to move valuable contraband and people who pay for first-class treatment.
“Family units are being used as diversions to get everyone else across,” says a federal agent on the border. “They’ll send 100 people, and to the left of that, they’ll send up dope.”
“The fentanyl issue will slam the country in 2021,” says Jaeson Jones, head of Omni Intelligence and a former captain in the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “As apprehensions have skyrocketed this year, drug seizures will dip at the border. There’s not enough law enforcement to stop drugs, due to large migration.”
One indirect consequence of the migrant surge may be spiraling overdose deaths. According to DEA intelligence reports, Mexican cartels are jacking up their sales of counterfeit pharmaceutical painkillers laced with fentanyl, an extraordinarily addictive and lethal synthetic opioid manufactured in China and smuggled to Mexican commercial ports in 55-gallon drums of bulk chemicals.
A minuscule dose of fentanyl can kill instantly. As of June 2020, estimated drug overdose deaths spiked to 83,335 over the previous 12 months, the highest level ever reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The U.S. will pay a significant price as overdose deaths rise and local crimes skyrocket throughout the country,” says Jones. “Watch for crime problems to be a major issue during the Biden administration.”
As far as Mexico’s cartels are concerned, it’s all good. Humans, drugs or guns, it’s all just profit for the crime barons, and business is booming.
“The cartels are making a killing,” says Bensman.
The owner of a medical clinic in Mexico that was raided this week for allegations of selling fake COVID-19 vaccines claims they were genuine and purchased in McAllen, Texas.
The raid took place this week in a suburban clinic of the Monterrey Metropolitan area, where authorities arrested six individuals who are currently facing federal charges. Authorities received information about the sale of fake vaccines at the clinic for approximately $600. According to the Nuevo Leon Health Secretary Manuel de la O, the raid was tied to an investigation into a clandestine distribution network where authorities seized vials with the lot number 783201 with an expiration date of August 2024, however, the vials were not being kept at proper storage temperatures.
The owner of Spine Clinic by Imperium, Carlos Villarreal Aranda, said the day after in public interviews the vaccines were in fact real from McAllen. Villarreal claimed he took advantage of the recent winter storm to put the vaccines in an ice chest and move them from Texas to Nuevo Leon.
“Why? To vaccinate my family, the doctors and some friends that we had to help because they have chronic illnesses, but we are not a distribution network and we are not salesmen,” Villarreal said, claiming the allegations against his clinic are false.
Villarreal incorrectly claimed the vaccine is being freely sold in Texas during his defense. “We did not know it was a crime to use them here,” he said. The clinic owner has not publicly revealed where he purchased the doses.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.
Exclusive: Biden Policies Force Release of 200 Migrants into West Texas Border Community Photo: Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark 4:25
Law Enforcement sources report the release of more than 200 mostly Central American family units into a West Texas border community. The Biden administration’s cancellation of swift removal policies for Central American migrants forced Border Patrol officials to begin the releases of certain migrants immediately.
The recent dismantling of international agreements by the Biden administration created a backlog of migrants being detained in Border Patrol facilities. Due to these changes, the Border Patrol will begin to release Central American family groups that cannot be removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to their home countries, according to information obtained from sources with knowledge of the plans. The order to release the migrants comes with little notice to local humanitarian organizations.
Lack of bed space in ICE detention facilities designed to accommodate family units put Border Patrol officials in a quandary. The only option available to the Border Patrol is the immediate release of these migrants into humanitarian shelters. The non-governmental shelters will coordinate their travel to other destinations around the country.
In West Texas, migrants will be transported from the region surrounding Eagle Pass, Texas. Other cities within the area lack adequately staffed humanitarian shelters to handle the number of releases. In Eagle Pass, humanitarian shelters will work to accommodate the new arrivals.
A U.S. Border Patrol contract transportation van drops off migrant families on February 14 at a shelter in Eagle Pass Texas. (Photo: Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark)
As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, the shelters are currently providing humanitarian care for recently released Haitian Migrants. They are still receiving the population of released Haitians on Sunday, further complicating the situation.
The releases began on Saturday and will continue over the coming days. Border Patrol agents must complete the work to reprocess hundreds of Central American migrants and their release will be continuous until the task is complete.
Asylum case file amendments take several hours per migrant. This removes many Border Patrol agents from patrol duties. The timing of the move could not have been worse.
Texas Governor Greg Abbot declared a state of emergency for all Texas counties due to impending freezing weather. Many of the migrants travel lightly and lack cold weather apparel. With little advance notice, local humanitarian shelters will likely attempt to provide shelter, food, and clothing through donations.
In a recent tweet, a State Department spokesperson celebrated the end to Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACA) with Central American countries that sped the removal process, thus preventing the overcrowding of Border Patrol Stations. These agreements also eased the strain on ICE managed detention facilities.
The border is in a state far from closed as thousands of migrants are being arrested by the Border Patrol weekly. Migrant releases, a rarity during the previous year, are now a frequent occurrence.
The new administration coined the term “irregular migration” apparently to soften earlier used terms such as “illegal immigration.” This perhaps is an attempt to deflect from the reality of what is happening along the southern border.
Witnesses reported seeing multiple Border Patrol contracted transportation vans dropping off released migrants at a local shelter on Sunday.
Other law enforcement sources outside the West Texas region are reporting migrant releases as a daily occurrence as well. One source reports the increase in illegal entries of previously removed asylum applicants under the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. Most, however, are swiftly returned to Mexico under the CDC emergency COVID-19 order. They are being advised to wait until the DHS program unfolds next week allowing their return and release into the United States.
Breitbart Texas reached out to ICE officials fo r additional information. A response was not available as of press time.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas Sector.
Adult Cartel Leader Escapes Mexican Border State Juvenile Detention Facility Breibart Texas / Cartel Chronicles 2:48
An adult cartel lieutenant broke out of a Tamaulipas juvenile detention facility where he was serving time for extortion. State authorities are tight-lipped about the escape and the probes into jailers who aided in the escape. The man belongs to a new Mexican border state organization going by the name “Cartel X.”
Over the past weekend, 22-year-old Mario Otoniel Garza Mendez slipped out of a state juvenile detention center in Guemez, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas. The fugitive is a top leader within the newly formed Cartel X, which is fighting against the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel for control of the state capital, Ciudad Victoria.
Even though he is now an adult, Garza Mendez was a minor at the time of his conviction. He must therefore serve his full sentence in his original facility.
The Tamaulipas government has not released any formal statements about the case, however, law enforcement sources tell Breitbart Texas that prison guards and some state police officers are under investigation for letting Garza Mendez walk out the front door. The guards claim the fugitive scaled a perimeter wall to freedom, however.
Garza Mendez is considered a close associate of Jesus Gilberto “El Cholo” Acuña Jurado, the founding leader of Cartel X. Authorities in Chihuahua arrested El Cholo in July 2020 for extortion in Tamaulipas . The new organization is responsible for executions, abductions, and arson as a way of pressuring businesses to change the recipients of protection fees.
Originally a member of the CDN-Los Zetas, Garza Mendez was tied to criminal activity since his early teen years and used the nickname “El Soberano.” However, a betrayal within CDN-Los Zetas led to the kidnapping of Garza Mendez. He was tortured and left for dead. After he recuperated, he and El Cholo began to recruit Los Zetas deserters to form Cartel X. The fledgling organization initially focused on meth sales but recently branched into protection rackets.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish . This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.
More than 14.6 million Texans, about half of the population of the state, remained under a boil-water advisory Friday, according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Tiffany Young. This encompasses more than 1,225 water supply systems and 63 percent of Texas counties following the record winter storm which hit the state last weekend.
People wait in line to fill propane tanks Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) In a press conference Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros stated that “we know that there are tens of thousands of leaks,” and that the Austin Fire Department responded to “thousands upon thousands of burst pipes.” In Houston, the fire department received almost 5,000 reports of burst pipes.
Texas Republican officials are currently in the process of trying to pin the blame on each other for the disaster. Governor Greg Abbott blamed the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), claiming that it told state officials five days before the blackouts that everything would be under control.
The “rolling blackouts,” which ERCOT claimed would be temporary, turned into multiple-day blackouts during freezing temperatures. The state government has done basically nothing to remedy the problem, with no systematic mobilization to bring utilities back and distribute food and water to millions of desperate Texans.
While people were left in the dark with many lacking water and heat, images of empty downtown office buildings with their lights on could be seen on social media in Austin, Houston, Dallas and other cities throughout the state. These are not areas that are largely populated or occupied for business, as most of the upper-middle class jobs that are in the city centers have gone remote as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Austin Energy officials have claimed that shutting down the vacant office buildings would cut off electricity to critical infrastructure and government buildings. Democratic Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner washed his hands of any blame Monday, tweeting, “ERCOT is the traffic manager of the electric grid which reports to the State. Neither the City nor the County controls or regulates ERCOT or the power generators. That is solely the responsibility of the State.”
With empty office buildings remaining well-lit and heated, thousands of homeless people have been left in the bone-chilling cold. Some churches have allowed people to shelter inside, and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas saw 800 people sheltered, according to Wayne Walker, a pastor and CEO of OurCalling. In Austin, officials said that 1,000 people are at shelters across the city, including the Palmer Event Center. Many more homeless are not in shelters and forced to suffer the cold, with those seeking shelter in non-profit and city-provided homeless shelters, which were already overcrowded, facing the deadly coronavirus.
One of the few measures taken by the Texas government, which has made a point of doing the least amount possible to help residents, was to open “warming” centers, many of which close at 9:00 p.m., forcing residents to return to freezing homes and apartments. On top of this, the warming centers themselves will likely serve as superspreader events for COVID-19 as social distancing and masking measures are extremely difficult to enforce.
Many people forced to seek shelter with relatives and friends in order to avoid the cold and or get water will likely be spreading the virus as well. The only silver lining is that schools were shuttered for the week, which serves to inhibit the spread of the virus.
A map of Austin provided on the city government’s website Friday morning shows all but two of the water districts in the city without water, and the two with water having low water pressure. The majority of the city’s residents have been forced to melt snow in order to flush their toilets, with grocery stores mostly out of water as well.
The Abilene Fire Department (AFD) reported that a third patient died in the city after a loss of water pressure prevented staff from performing necessary treatment. He died before transfer to another hospital was possible, with AFD saying weather conditions did not delay the transfer.
Despite ERCOT declaring an end to the energy emergency, around 170,000 customers were still without power Friday afternoon as temperatures were expected to be below freezing overnight in many areas.
In San Antonio fire fighters were unable to put out a blaze at an apartment complex due to frozen fire hydrants, being forced to wait for water trucks to arrive at the scene. The fire, which started at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, lasted well into the night, completely engulfing the building, which later collapsed, with burning cars in a nearby parking lot.
Trucks that had been sent from around the region carrying thousands of gallons of water were depleted quickly leaving the fire to regain strength again. In an interview with NBC affiliate WOAI Bexar-Bulverde Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jerry Bialick stated, “Our problem is we get a little bit ahead and then the water runs out.”
A spokesman for the Red Cross stated that 32 units were affected with 87 people displaced. This was at a point where temperatures were below freezing, with shortages of gasoline preventing vehicular travel out of the state for many.
On Tuesday morning, 11-year-old Christian Pavon, who had immigrated from Honduras and was excited to see snow for the first time, was found unresponsive and later died after his family’s trailer home lost power on Sunday night, causing the home to become very cold. His aunt told ABC13 KTRK that he had no underlying conditions and that the cold was a contributing factor to his death. An official cause of death has not yet been produced.
Illustrating the absolute contempt for the population held by both parties, the Biden administration sent an insulting 60 generators, 10,000 wool and 50,000 cotton blankets, 729,000 liters of water and 225,000 meals as of Thursday. This to a state where 14.6 million people are without water, 170,000 customers are still without power, and grocery stores across the state have empty shelves. The amount of water delivered would only satisfy around 200,000 people for one day.
The phrase “too little, too late” does not even begin to scratch the surface of the essentially non-existent and frankly ridiculous response by the administration hailed as “progressive” by the corporate media and pseudo-left.
Biden’s response is similar to the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, which wreaked havoc in New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005, during which the Republican administration ignored the suffering of hundreds of thousands of residents of Louisiana.
Biden has barely said anything, only stating on Friday that he will sign a “major” disaster declaration sometime soon and would perhaps visit the state in the middle of next week. As with the initial efforts, his disaster declaration likely entails little of significance to Texans.
In continuing the Trump administration’s herd immunity policy, which sacrificed thousands of lives per day in order to keep the stock market afloat and continue the production of profits for the financial oligarchy, the Biden administration, while posing as a friend to workers, will do as little as possible to respond to the catastrophe in Texas. This would be seen as siphoning billions of dollars away from Wall Street and the Pentagon.
Amid the unfolding disaster, Comstock Resources Inc., a shale driller in Texas and Louisiana whose majority shareholder is Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is profiteering off of the crisis, increasing its prices upwards of 33,000 percent for each mBtu of natural gas.
While some natural gas producers have had a freeze because wells stopped working, Comstock is already ramping up production and charging $15 to as much as $179 per thousand cubic feet, as opposed to a last quarter average of $2.40 per thousand cubic feet. President and Chief Financial Officer Roland Burns stated Wednesday that “obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot.”
Amazon has started price gouging as well, with bottles of water being sold online for as much as $25, or more than five times the normal price.
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