President Joe Biden’s pending Build Back Better (BBB) bill will shrink inflation by cutting Americans’ wages with a flood of roughly 9 million legalized and new workers, according to Facebook-funded FWD.us, a leader in the pro-amnesty movement.
“As the United States continues to experience historic labor shortages contributing to inflation and driving up costs for families, FWD.us analysis below shows that immigration relief could help address these shortages and curb inflationary trends,” said the group’s December 12 report.
That anti-inflation message is being echoed by the Democratic establishment as it tries to overcome opposition from a few Democratic Senators, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).
“Price increases continue to squeeze family budgets,” President Joe Biden said on December 10. “The challenge of prices underscores the importance that Congress move without delay to pass my Build Back Better plan.”
“If we want to fight inflation and lower costs, the best thing we can do is to pass Build Back Better,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in another December 10 statement.
But the FWD.us report is directly targeting Americans’ wages as it pushes Democrats to deliver what its investors want — more cheap labor, more revenues, more profits, and higher stock values.
The FWD.us report continues:
Families in our country are gravely concerned by inflation, and persistent worker shortages present a clear inflationary pressure [via rising wages]. Not only can immigration provisions in BBB shore up existing workforces in industries experiencing labor disruptions, the act’s provisions would also allow, in the long term, millions [emphasis added] of potential new workers backlogged in the lawful immigration system to come to the U.S. to work.
The report acknowledged the rising wages spurred by President Donald Trump’s 2020 reduction in immigration: “[The extra migration] could help offset the decrease in lawful immigration experienced during the Trump Administration, a likely contributing factor to our current labor force shortages.”
Numerous groups — including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs — have credited Trump’s reduced labor supply for boosting Americans’ wages.
The FWD.us report comes as more Democrat politicians and pro-migration activists tout more migration as a wage-cutting fix for inflation.
“Our economy stands to benefit tremendously from allowing more folks to work legally, especially as we face a labor shortage that continues to contribute towards inflation,” said a December 5 statement from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to a pro-migration website, LatinoRebels.com. The LatinoRebels site is quietly funded by very establishment donors, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which uses Facebook profits to fund FWD.us and other pro-migration groups.
CASA,an advocacy organization for Latino and immigrant people and other immigrant advocacy groups rally outside the White House in Lafayette Park, to demand that the Biden administration take action on citizenship for all on May 26, 2021 in Washington, DC (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images).
“If you have more people that are allowed to work in this country, then there’s gonna be less of a tight labor market,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) told LatinoRebels.com on December 2.
The Democrats’ top advocate for amnesty and migration, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), also backed the argument, according to a Bloomberg reporter: “Asked if immigration parole proposal in [the pending Build Back Better bill] would decrease inflation, Durbin says ‘Oh most certainly … If there are more workers filling those jobs, it’s deflationary.'”
However, the FWD.us report and Democrats ignore the inflationary impact of new immigrants on rents and housing prices. Those prices are already rising in 2021 as the nation’s cheap-labor/low-tech housing industry builds few new homes — and as 2 million new migrants, legal and illegal, compete for housing against the roughly 4 million young Americans who entered the workforce in 2021.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., talks about the the Build Back Better bill during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The FWD.us report also hides prior claims by pro-amnesty groups that an amnesty will raise wages for the illegal migrants already working in the United States. “Such [legalization] reforms would increase earnings and productivity for undocumented workers, eventually leading to increased tax contributions and local spending,” the Center for American Progress claimed in 2020.
The FWD.us report even links to a report saying inflation is rising because employers are bidding up wages during a labor shortage:
“The growth in the working-age population is not going to slow, it’s actually going to decline,” [Charles] Goodhart said Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the European Central Bank. “People will bid up wages in order to deal with the shortages of workers they will be increasingly facing — that’s not transitory, it’s here for the long-term.”
The thrust of the FWD.us report is that the BBB’s migration changes would reduce claimed “labor shortages” by delivering “millions of potential new workers” to the U.S. economy.
This argument refers to at least four categories of foreign workers who would be allowed to buy green cards, regardless of their impact on American families.
The first category of foreign workers is the roughly 1 million contract workers who have been imported by companies to replace American university graduates. This foreign workforce includes many gig workers in the technology sector, but also many foreign graduates in a growing variety of “healthcare, university, design, and manufacturing careers.”
The pending BBB bill also would sell fast-track green cards to an uncapped population of future foreign workers — perhaps millions — who sign contracts that will take jobs from American graduates during the next decade. These workers are likely to settle in the coastal states, thus reducing investors’ incentives to create jobs in the interior states, such as Manchin’s West Virginia.
The third category of workers is the waiting population of “chain migrants” seeking to join recent legal immigrant family members. This population now includes 4 million people who are waiting in a multi-year line for some of the roughly 230,000 green cards that are distributed each year to relatives of immigrants. The BBB bill would allow the four million chain migrants in the line to buy green cards if they can fly into the United States, for example, on a tourist visa to visit Disney World. Most would settle in coastal states, further boosting housing costs for the sons and daughters of Americans.
The fast-track process would likely encourage more people to apply for chain migration status, delivering yet more workers and house buyers in the next several years. Other countries have seen real estate bubbles amid mass immigration.
The pending chain migrants are selected by new immigrants, not by Americans, U.S. employers, or government-drafted standards for productivity. This migrants-select-migrants policy ensures that many arrivals have few skills and can only garner low-wage jobs. Their arrival would further flood the low-skilled labor market, thus trimming inflation by suppressing wages for millions of Americans and other recent immigrants.
But all migrants, even if unskilled, sick, or old, are a boon to business groups because they spike consumer demand for groceries, retail goods, and housing. So any inflow of millions of migrants would increase housing costs, as well as stock market values for people who own real estate or shares in groceries, retail stores, or the healthcare and auto industries.
That’s a win-win for most investors, whose stock values would rise amid the further stagnation of Americans’ careers, salaries, wages, and housing.
Speaking of investors, the breadth of investors who founded and funded FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website sometime in the last few months. But copies exist at other sites.
The FWD.us report is titled: “Immigration relief in BBB can help curb inflation by stabilizing supply chains amidst historic labor shortages.”
As usual, establishment journalists, including the Washington Post’s Greg Waldman, ignore migration as they spotlight the most popular aspects of the BBB spending plan.
CALIFORNIA UNDER MEX-OCCUPATION. THE NAFTA DEMOCRAT PARTY'S DREAM AND PROMISE TO ILLEGALS IS 49 MORE MEXIFORNIAS!
A HISTORY OF MEX GANGS IN CA
VERDUGO MEXICAN GANGS
https://unitedgangs.com/verdugo-gangsters/
IMAGES OF MEX-OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES - MEXICO'S SECOND LARGEST CITY
Gang Lands # 9 The Last Crips of Boyle Heights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSvU7tt12Y8
Gang Lands # 10 Gangs of Downtown Los Angeles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBs7M28EwF0
Central America Town in Los Angeles California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChLZy9bSLXQ
When La Raza “The Race” Supremacist Kamala Harris was Attorney General of California, she announced that nearly half the murders in Mex-occupied California were perpetrated by Mexican gangs. That didn’t stop her hispandering!
If you go to the Los Angeles Police 200 most wanted criminals, 186 are Mexicans.
When Mexican M.E.Ch.A. separatist and La Raza member Xavier Becerra became Attorney General of California, the first thing he did as AG was delete from the State of California AG website the list of California's ten most wanted criminals: they were all Mexicans
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens.
Congressman: Illegal Antelope Valley Pot Grows Being Run By International Drug Cartels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-XCBPMgDUc
FBI Arrests Dozens of Drug Ring Members Around Inland Empire | NBCLA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMt5JUwDhMo
“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, you’d give him an A-plus, but theAmerican people would give him an F. The crisis at our border was not only entirely predictable, it was predicted. I predicted that if you campaign all year long on open borders, amnesty, and health care for illegals, you’re going to get more migrants at the border. That’s what’s happened since the election.”
SEN. TOM COTTON
MEXICO = DRUGS AND UNREGISTERED DEM VOTERS!
Desert towns in California have seen a dramatic increase of illegal marijuana plantations, operating through means of water theft, human trafficking, and violence.
How Foreign Drug Operations Are Taking Over California’s Desert Towns: Jorge Ventura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL86snd4dP8
“All our street gangs are a problem,” Lawhead said. “They create an environment of fear. Gangs in general are responsible for a majority of our homicides and a lot of the other illegal activity in the city.”
The release said the Verdugo gang and its affiliates are linked to the Mexican Mafia prison gang. The indictment outlines how some of the proceeds generated by narcotic sales were funneled to the Mexican Mafia.
“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, you’d give him an A-plus, but theAmerican people would give him an F. The crisis at our border was not only entirely predictable, it was predicted. I predicted that if you campaign all year long on open borders, amnesty, and health care for illegals, you’re going to get more migrants at the border. That’s what’s happened since the election.” SEN. TOM COTTON
JUDICIAL WATCH
THE GRUESOME MS-13 GANGS FROM LOS ANGELES: THEIR MURDER, RAPE, AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/judicial-watch-deported-gangster.html
The illegal stabbed her to death with a screwdriver and then ran her over with her car.
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-american-border-with-narcomex.html
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH
“Mexican authorities have arrested the former mayor of a rural community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the kidnapping, murder and incineration of hundreds of victims through a network of ovens at the hands of the Los Zetas cartel. The arrest comes after Breitbart Texas exposed not only the horrors of the mass extermination, but also the cover-up and complicity of the Mexican government.”
“Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com
A HISTORY OF MEX GANGS
VERDUGO MEXICAN GANGS
https://unitedgangs.com/verdugo-gangsters/
Attorney General Bonta Announces 180 Felony Arrests During Investigation Targeting Westside Verdugo Criminal Street Gang in San Bernardino
Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov
SAN BERNARDINO – California Attorney General Rob Bonta, San Bernardino Police Chief David Green, and San Bernardino District Attorney Jason Anderson today announced the results of a joint investigation into the Westside Verdugo criminal street gang. In June, the police department requested assistance with its investigation of the gang’s violent criminal activity from the California Department of Justice’s Special Operations Unit. Together with the district attorney’s office and other local law enforcement partners, the team made 180 felony arrests, shut down 30 illegal gambling establishments, and seized 92 handguns, 19 assault weapons, $295,870 in U.S. currency, as well as hundreds of pounds of illicit drugs over the course of the investigation. Yesterday, the investigation culminated in a largescale operation with agents executing 34 search warrants, arresting 31 suspects, and seizing 11 firearms at multiple sites in San Bernardino County.
“Members and associates of this gang have committed violent crimes in San Bernardino with no regard for the people in the community who are directly or indirectly harmed,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “This investigation and yesterday’s arrests and seizures have removed dangerous individuals from our streets and firearms from the hands of those who would choose to commit violent crimes. The results of this investigation could also assist law enforcement in solving other cases in the area. The partnership between our agents and local law enforcement made this possible, and I’m thankful to every person involved in this successful investigation.”
“As decriminalization initiatives continue to undermine the safety of our community, we have never been more reliant on our law enforcement partners,” said San Bernardino Police Chief David Green.
“The scale of this multiagency operation speaks to the commitment we have to eradicate criminal street gangs across San Bernardino County, particularly one with such a violent history as the Westside Verdugo gang,” said San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson. “Violent crime is on the rise, and several of the defendants we have filed against are facing their 3rd strike, indicating a propensity for criminal behavior. The success of this takedown was due to the tremendous efforts of the San Bernardino Police Department and the Department of Justice in conducting the investigation, and the tenacity of our specialized gang unit prosecutors. We will use everything in our toolkit including weapon enhancements, gang enhancements, prior convictions, and prior strike convictions to ensure maximum accountability from these defendants, keeping career criminals off the streets of San Bernardino and out of our communities.”
Westside Verdugo has an extensive criminal history in the San Bernardino area. The gang is suspected of multiple violent crimes including assault, attempted murder, and murder.
Over the course of the investigation, numerous violent crimes were prevented, including shootings and armed robberies. Evidence collected during the investigation also assisted in solving two homicides in the area. Agents also shut down 30 illegal gambling establishments and seized over 100 illegal gambling machines and devices. These establishments were operated by members and associates of Westside Verdugo and brought in tens of thousands of dollars a week for the gang. In 2021, five homicides, four attempted murders, and multiple other crimes were linked to these sites.
DOJ’s Special Operations Unit is a collaborative investigative effort between DOJ and the California Highway Patrol. The unit provides statewide enforcement for combating violent career criminals, gangs, and organized crime groups, along with intrastate drug traffickers. These unique and essential teams use the latest technology and advanced investigative techniques and work alongside local law enforcement to enhance investigations into violent criminals and organized crime throughout the state.
SAN BERNARDINO: 52 gang members indicted in drug sales, smuggling case
By BRIAN ROKOS | brokos@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise
Fifty-two members and associates of San Bernardino’s largest criminal gang were indicted Thursday on narcotics trafficking charges, the FBI said.
Of those 52, 21 people were arrested Thursday, and 22 already were in custody on unrelated charges, according to an FBI news release. The other nine are being sought.
All were charged with conspiracy to distribute and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and heroin. Seven also are charged with distributing the narcotics, the FBI said. The indictment, unsealed Thursday, was the result of a yearslong investigation by federal, state, county and city authorities that targeted the West Side Verdugo gang.
The defendants face 10 years to life in prison if convicted, the FBI said.
San Bernardino police Lt. Rich Lawhead, who was part of the team that made the arrests, said that in addition to drug pushing, West Side Verdugo members are responsible for several homicides and assaults in the city.
“All our street gangs are a problem,” Lawhead said. “They create an environment of fear. Gangs in general are responsible for a majority of our homicides and a lot of the other illegal activity in the city.”
Most of the 90-page indictment is devoted to summaries of 502 separate phone calls or text messages intercepted by authorities in which the sales of heroin and meth were discussed in coded language. Other messages discussed smuggling drugs to inmates, including those in the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, and Corcoran and Ironwood state prisons.
There were also conversations about money owed, the collection of “drug taxes” from dealers allowed to set up in gang territory, and the enforcement of gang rules.
The conversations occurred from Aug. 26, 2010, to Jan. 16, 2012.
“A lot of these people were shocked when we showed up,” Lawhead said, noting the amount of time that had passed since the investigation began. “But the wheels of justice do move.”
Lawhead said he hoped the arrests would dissuade youngsters from joining gangs.
The release said the Verdugo gang and its affiliates are linked to the Mexican Mafia prison gang. The indictment outlines how some of the proceeds generated by narcotic sales were funneled to the Mexican Mafia.
Some of the drugs were dealt at what was described as the “7th Street Park.” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said that was a reference to La Plaza Park on Mt. Vernon Avenue, at Seventh Street on San Bernardino’s west side.
Lawhead said heroin has been sold at that park for years, and that the city’s officers patrol La Plaza and other parks in an effort to deter drug dealers.
Gang members went to great lengths to smuggle drugs to inmates, according to the indictment. One person, identified as “Martinez,” was told to sneak drugs into West Valley Detention Center by getting himself arrested and booked into the facility. His plan was foiled, however, when a police officer merely wrote a citation for an unspecified offense.
“There wasn’t anyone who wanted to go to jail today – I guarantee you that,” Lawhead said.
Other agencies participating in the investigation and arrests, according to the FBI, were the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, San Bernardino County Probation Department, Los Angeles Police Department, LA County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Joint investigation into San Bernardino street gang nets 180 arrests, firearms, drugs
Tentacles of operation allegedly reached into Los Angeles and Orange counties
·
By JOE NELSON | San Bernardino Sun
A yearlong investigation into a San Bernardino street gang’s criminal activity has netted 180 arrests, shuttered 30 illegal gambling operations and resulted in the seizure of more than 100 assault weapons and handguns, authorities announced Thursday.
San Bernardino police last year began investigating illegal firearms sales involving Westside Verdugo, a Latino street gang rooted in the city for roughly 70 years.
But early on in the investigation, police realized they were dealing with something much bigger than just illicit gun sales, Police Chief David Green said during a news conference Thursday at the San Bernardino Police Department, where dozens of assault weapons and handguns seized by police during the investigation were spread across a table. Also on display was a large electronic gambling machine.San Bernardino Police Chief David Green announces 180 arrests made and 111 firearms seized during a multiagency operation targeting the Westside Verdugo criminal street gang during a press conference at the San Bernardino Police Station in San Bernardino on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
“As they started doing more analysis on these cases, they were recognizing it was a little more coordinated and a little more significant than what they initially realized, and that’s when they started pursuing it as more of a conspiracy type of investigation,” Green said. The investigation and subsequent arrests extended into Orange and Los Angeles counties, he said.
Several agencies enlisted
In June, the investigation ramped up when the San Bernardino Police Department asked the state attorney general’s Special Operations Unit to join in. The Santa Ana Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol also assisted in the investigation, which culminated Wednesday when officers fanned out across San Bernardino County, serving 34 search warrants, arresting 31 people and seizing 111 firearms at multiple locations.
During the course of the investigation, coined “Operation Westside Jenga,” police seized 92 handguns, 19 assault weapons, more than $295,000 in cash and hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin and fentanyl. Several potential shootings and armed robberies were thwarted, and evidence collected by investigators during the investigation assisted in the closure of two homicide cases, police said.
Additionally, investigators infiltrated and shut down 30 illegal gambling operations and seized more than 100 high-end gambling machines. The facilities were linked to five homicides, four attempted murders and other crimes in 2021, authorities said.
Gambling operations
The gambling operations — which housed high-end gambling machines, most of them acquired on the black market and imported from China — were bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a week and were operated out of private residences, warehouses and closed businesses, Green said.
He said the gambling facilities were a joint-enterprise between Westside Verdugo and the Mexican Mafia, the patriarchal prison gang that receives a share of profits from drug sales and other illicit business carried out by Westside Verdugo and other Latino street gangs in the form of “taxes.” Some of that revenue was reinvested into the gambling operations.
“It has a hierarchy. It has its own business model. It’s an illicit business model, but it’s one that’s very lucrative nonetheless,” Green said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the people of San Bernardino “can go to bed tonight knowing their community is safer.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announces the results of a multiagency operation targeting the Westside Verdugo criminal street gang that resulted in 180 arrests and shutdown of 30 illegal gambling operations during a press conference at the San Bernardino Police Station in San Bernardino on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
“We’re putting serious criminals behind bars,” Bonta said, adding that he was proud of the results of the investigation not only as attorney general, but also as a father. “Every child in California deserves to grow up in a safe neighborhood — a neighborhood that is free from violence, a neighborhood without gun violence.”
Feds not involved
Green said authorities opted to handle the prosecution locally without the help of the federal government, which often takes down such large criminal enterprises using the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, referred to as the RICO Act.
“We’re not pursuing a federal prosecution in this case because we have the local District Attorney’s Office that we feel is going to be able to give us a successful prosecutorial outcome,” Green said. “But these types of cases are often handled by federal prosecutors under that RICO statute.”
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson said his office has so far charged 45 defendants with various felony offenses, which include a total of 57 firearm enhancements and 41 gang enhancements. Six of the defendants are facing third strikes, Anderson said.
“Our role is twofold in this particular instance. Number one is we are going to punish these individuals as severely as we possibly can, and number two, we’re going to separate them from an otherwise law-abiding community for as long as we can,” Anderson said.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson speaks during a press conference at the San Bernardino Police Station in San Bernardino on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. Authorities announced the results of a multiagency operation targeting the Westside Verdugo criminal street gang that resulted in 180 arrests and shutdown of 30 illegal gambling operations. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
More criminal charges are expected, authorities said.
“Many of these cases are still under review, and we are expecting many more charges to be filed,” Green said. “Some of them will be tried jointly, and some of them will be parsed out separately.”
A secret look at a Mexican cartel's low-tech, multimillion-dollar fentanyl operation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdoRAjilrhs
Fentanyl is making its way into various drugs sold in the U.S. Here's how it gets there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH_OJbfFuN0
Cartels Are Making Millions on Fentanyl-Laced Medicine | Crimewave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV6qS8xH24M
"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens.
Texas DPS: Mexican Cartels Committing Murders in the U.S.
ILDEFONSO ORTIZ and BRANDON DARBY
Drug cartel gunmen are crossing the border to commit murders in Texas, authorities claim. The statements by officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety directly clash with longstanding claims by local police chiefs who routinely say that border cities are safe.
“These criminal organizations come across from Mexico to the U.S. side and they kill individuals. they murder individuals,” Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Lieutenant Chris Olivarez told Sara Carter with Fox News. “We have had several incidents that have taken place along the border using professional-type weapons the way they carry out these killings, very professional, very methodical.”
The statements by Olivarez come at a time when both DPS and the Texas National Guard increased their law enforcement presence along the border in response to record-breaking human and drug smuggling activity by criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel and the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas.
The statements made by Olivarez clash with the longstanding narrative by several politicians, local police chiefs, and sheriffs who claim that border cities are safe. Those claims are usually backed up by statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Report. However as Breitbart Texas has reported, the UCR only looks at seven specific crimes and does not account for criminal activity that is specific to border cities such as kidnappings, extortion, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and human trafficking.
Additionally, the terminology used by police departments for the UCR report allows them to hide the severity of certain crimes. One example particular to border cities deals with home invasions, where teams of gunmen storm into a house looking for drugs or cash. As Breitbart Texas has reported, home invasions are reported in the UCR report only as robberies.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Surge in Fentanyl Seizures Show Cartels Taking Advantage of Lax Border Policies, DHS Officials Say
A DEA agent checks pills containing fentanyl / Getty ImagesJoseph Simonson • November 17, 2021 5:00 am
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Customs and Border Protection's fentanyl seizures skyrocketed by over 40 percent in the month of October, as drug traffickers and cartels take advantage of the border crisis.
Agency data show that CBP agents last month captured nearly 1,050 pounds of the lethal opioid, the fifth-highest amount in three years. For comparison, the amount of fentanyl seized in October is more than 2.5 times the amount the agency seized in the first three months of 2019 and roughly 40 percent of the amount seized in all of 2019.
The high amount of fentanyl busts coincides with skyrocketing opiate overdoses across the country—the Centers for Disease Control recorded a record-high 12-month overdose death toll between March 2020 and March 2021 with no signs of deceleration through the end of this year. The seizures also come as President Joe Biden reverses a number of border policies, a decision that critics say grants more opportunities for criminal elements to smuggle drugs into the country.
One senior Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Free Beacon that drug smugglers are accelerating their operations as agents on the border face resource and manpower constraints with processing asylum claims instead of trying to stop drug smugglers.
"Cartels are exploiting the migrant crisis to expand drug and human smuggling," one senior DHS official said. "The administration knew full well that using agents to process mass groups of economic migrants would mean reducing the effort to combat crime. They alone own these failures."
The Biden administration has touted high seizure numbers as a success. Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates on Nov. 2 tweeted out an excerpt from an MSNBC piece that said, "The [fentanyl] seizures disprove one of the [GOP's] favorite talking points: If the president had implemented an ‘open-border' policy, as the right routinely claims, U.S. Customs and Border Protection wouldn't have stopped these shipments."
Officials within Border Patrol and DHS disputed that characterization by the White House, with the senior DHS official calling Bates's comment "galaxy brain" thinking.
Many states have pinned much of the blame for the opioid crisis on the Biden administration's immigration policies, calling them reckless and a public health threat.
West Virginia, which has been among the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, in August filed a lawsuit against DHS and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the department's decision to end the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, which force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico before their court dates in the United States. The state alleged in court that the decision contributed to the "devastating deadly flood of fentanyl across the Southwest border."
"By its consequences burdening and distracting the Border Patrol, the termination of the [Migrant Protection Protocols] decreases the security of the border against fentanyl trafficking between ports of entry, leading directly to both increased numbers of smuggling attempts and increased rates of success in evading Border Patrol," the lawsuit stated. Missouri in April filed a similar suit against DHS.
Research has found that just two milligrams of fentanyl can cause a lethal overdose in people with no prior use of the drug, meaning the amount of the drug seized in October alone could kill over 200 million people.
The influx of fentanyl from across the border has led to bipartisan efforts in Congress to ramp up law-enforcement efforts to arrest and prosecute dealers and traffickers. A group of Republican and Democratic senators in September introduced the Providing Officers with Electronic Resources Act, which provides grants to local law-enforcement agencies for portable fentanyl screening devices.
