THE ONE THING THE U.S. GOV PROMISES THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE IS TOTAL FAILURE
Addressing Social Security's $19.8-trillion unfunded liability
While retirees, in general, are looking forward to the highest cost of living adjustment (COLA) in 40 years, one set of retirees will get nothing to cover the cost of inflation over the past year. People born in 1960 will find a lump of coal in their stockings come the new year, putting them about $20,000 less prepared for retirement than every other retiree, present or future.
This troubling disparity underscores an unshakeable dogma on Capitol Hill: Social Security is flawless. As a result of that blind faith, Social Security reform deals less with how to fix the program and more with how we pay for what the program currently does.
The system isn't cheating those born in 1960. This result is just the way the system works. It does not protect retirees from inflation that occurs in the year they turn 61. This isn't a problem. It is an unadvertised feature.
The cause of the feature is "wage-indexing." While that term may sound boring, it actually serves as the autopilot of the program. On one hand, this feature determines what retirees get paid and how much tax a worker might pay. On the other hand, the autopilot from time to time takes on the shape of Wile E. Coyote with his ACME box of high finance.
The autopilot of Social Security dates back nearly half a century. In a perfect world, the indexing process serves two roles. First, it ensures that the historic earnings of workers aren't eroded by inflation. Second, it expands Social Security benefits so that voters do not have to wait for Congress to agree upon how to change the program.
The benefits formula within Social Security translates what you earned in the past into a meaningful number for the year in which someone turns 60 — roughly retirement age. To illustrate, if someone born in 1960 earned $15,878 in 1983, for example, the system thinks the worker earned $52,505 (see the SSA's example for more detail).
According to Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute, the average benefit delivered by the program grew by 32 percent after inflation since 2000. That means that Social Security has expanded itself by nearly 1.5 percent on average over the past 20 years.
Unfortunately, there is a gap in the inflation protection provided by Social Security. Up to the age of 60, wage-indexing takes care of the changes in prices because employees get raises that generally incorporate inflation. For those 62 and older, the COLA ensures that buying power remains constant. The year in which a worker turns 61 is, shall we say, "a gap year."
Separately, wage-indexing is also part of the ongoing questions surrounding the program's long-term financial stability. Most Americans understand that the growth of revenue going into Social Security is rising more slowly than the growth of expenses coming out of Social Security.
The part that they generally miss is that some of that instability is the unintended consequence of wage-indexing. In the existing system, the program's revenue grows based on what happens to paychecks up to a cap — currently $142,800 (soon to be $147,000). Wage-indexing, however, grows expense based on every dollar earned by workers.
The people who came up with this process did not envision wage inequality or its implication for Social Security. When wages earned above the cap grow more rapidly, the program expands benefits but doesn't generate any offsetting revenue to pay the bills.
To illustrate the problem, ordinary workers did pretty well in 2020, earning 1.5 percent more in wages than they did in 2019. People who earn more than the cap, on the other hand, absolutely raked bank. Combined, the system made the benefit formula 2.83 percent more generous because the expansion of benefits is based on wage growth as a whole.
If wage growth is unequal over one year, it wouldn't be a problem. If it is a 40-year trend, the program will expand benefits faster than its ability to pay them. This is part of the problem with Social Security that Congress should fix rather than pay for.
These problems are not insurmountable, but progress hinges on one thing: someone on Capitol Hill would have to acknowledge that a program with a financial gap of $19.8 trillion is not flawless.
Brenton Smith is a policy adviser at The Heartland Institute, with work appearing in nationally recognized publications including Barron's, Forbes, MarketWatch, The Hill, USA today, and more.
Image: SSA.
To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
1 Million Migrants Apprehended in Texas-Based Border Sectors Since Biden Inauguration
Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 1 million migrants who illegally crossed into the five Texas-based sectors during the 10 full months since President Joe Biden’s Inauguration. This represents an average of more than 100,000 migrant apprehensions per month and an increase of nearly 375 percent over the same period in 2020.
Since February 1, the first full month of the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.05 million migrants in the five Texas-based border sectors. During the same 10-month period one year earlier, agents apprehended only 221,232 migrants in the same sectors, according to reports obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. These numbers do not include the hundreds of thousands of migrant “got-aways” during the past fiscal year as reported by Breitbart Texas.
Responding to the nearly 375 percent increase in migrant apprehensions in the Texas-based Border Patrol sectors since Biden took office, Governor Greg Abbott began Operation Lone Star earlier this year. In May, the Texas governor declared the Texas border counties to be in a state of disaster due to the migrant surge. The following month, Abbott announced the State of Texas would build its own border wall and begin arresting migrants on state crimes they commit after crossing the border.
“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” Governor Abbott told Breitbart Texas in an exclusive interview shortly before the public announcement of the planned border wall on June 10. “And amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”
Migrant apprehensions in the Lone Star State peaked one month later when migrants apprehended nearly 134,000 migrants. Abbott continued to deploy more Texas National Guardsmen and Department of Public Safety troopers to facilitate the arrests of migrants violating state law. By September, when the State of Texas began construction of border barriers, migrant apprehension in the Texas-based sectors dropped by 14 percent to 115,144 apprehensions.
Following increasing arrests of migrants by Texas law enforcement officials, apprehensions fell to just over 94,000 migrants — a decrease from the peak of nearly 30 percent, CBP reports show.
In September, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 9 providing an additional $1.8 billion in state funds for border security. These include funds to construct the State’s border wall project.
Of the 1,049,144 migrants in the Texas-based border sectors during the Biden-era, 573,167 (55 percent) took place in the Rio Grande Valley Sector — the nation’s busiest border sector.
Governor Abbott traveled to the Rio Grande Valley Sector over the weekend to announce yet another step in the State’s increasing efforts to step up and secure the Texas border with Mexico. Abbott revealed the beginning of construction of a first-ever state-funded border wall, Breitbart Texas reported.
“The State of Texas has taken comprehensive action to secure our southern border and address the border crisis while President Biden has sat idly by,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a border wall unveiling ceremony on Saturday. “In June, I promised Texans that we would step up in the federal government’s absence and build our own border wall.”
“We have wasted no time in the six months since that promise was made, and I am proud to announce that construction of the Texas border wall is now underway,” the Texas governor added. “Today not only represents the first phase of the Texas border wall, but it also serves as a major milestone in our efforts to combat illegal immigration, stop the smuggling of drugs and people, and keep our communities safe.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: 600 Migrants Enter West Texas Border Town in One Day
EAGLE PASS, Texas — Despite a law enforcement presence on both sides of the Rio Grande, a CBP source says more than 600 migrants were apprehended after entering the United States on Thursday.
The source says the arrests in Eagle Pass accounted for more than 50 percent of the apprehensions within the Del Rio Sector that day.
Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark
A rescue team in Mexico, “Grupo Beta,” patrolled the river periodically in an airboat as troops with the Mexican National Guard watched. The Mexican National Guard, known as “La Guardia Nacional,” had little apparent impact.
Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark
On the United States side of the Rio Grande, Border Patrol agents performed similar marine activities.
Texas National Guard troops standing along a makeshift wall of shipping containers watched over the river and took migrants into custody. Soldiers waited with family units until Border Patrol transports arrived.
Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark
One unaccompanied migrant child walked through a gap in the Texas border wall currently under construction. The wall is nearing completion, however, gates along roadways have yet to be installed. A Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol trooper spotted the youth and turned the migrant over to Border Patrol.
In a revolving door fashion, Border Patrol agents made several trips to the Eagle Pass International Bridge to return mostly single adult migrants to Mexico under the CDC Title 42 Emergency COVID-19 order. The source says these scenarios are playing out daily and have challenged the agency’s ability to keep up with the constant flow.
Breitbart Texas/Randy Clark
The source says there are no “off days,” meaning the flow of migrants is constant. The source says the Rio Grande Valley still maintains a firm lead in overall apprehensions.
The migrant crossings are occurring in the downtown area and more remote ones around the city. The constant flow is creating a sense of frustration among residents by the lack of a coherent federal response.
Recently, nearly 200 migrants crossed the Rio Grande near Normandy, Texas, in one single event north of Eagle Pass. The larger groups are mostly Venezuelan, Cuban, and Nicaraguan migrants.
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. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Data: Joe Biden Imports Almost 1.5 Million Migrants in Eight Months
President Joe Biden’s government has inflated the foreign population in the United States to record levels by adding almost 1.5 million migrants in just eight months, according to census data reviewed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The policy added roughly one legal or illegal migrant for every three Americans who enter the workforce during the same period.
The resulting inflow brings the official estimate of the foreign population up to 46.2 million. That percentage means that one-in-seven of the people living in the United States were born elsewhere.
The massive inflow will help Biden’s deputies and their business allies to re-inflate the bubble of cheap labor that has suppressed Americans’ wages and salaries since 1990.
That bubble burst in early 2020 when President Donald Trump shut the borders, froze multiple visa-worker programs, and reduced the foreign population by roughly 1.2 million.
That low-migration policy allowed many Americans to get wage raises and workplace benefits from employers who were used to a plentiful supply of cheap migrant labor.
A statement from the CIS reported:
There were a total of 46.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) in the country in November 2021. This is the largest number of immigrants ever recorded in any government survey or census going back to 1850.
As a share of the total U.S. population, immigrants were 14.2 percent in November 2021 — the highest percentage in 111 years. The immigrant share of the population has tripled since 1970 and has come close to doubling since 1990.
The number of immigrants in the country grew by 1.5 million between November 2020 and November of this year after declining by 1.2 million between February and September 2020 as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.
“Since President Biden’s election, the total legal and illegal immigrant population has grown spectacularly,” said Steven Camarota, the research director at CIS. “The ongoing border surge, the ending of nearly all interior enforcement, and the ramping up of legal immigration are clearly showing up in the data,” he added.
About 500,000 of the extra migrants are job-seeking “got-aways” illegals who were allowed to sneak across the U.S. southern border by Biden’s pro-migration appointees at the Department of Homeland Security.
Another 500,000 migrants were invited in during the eight months up to October 1 under a variety of legal pretexts, such as requests for asylum or requests to reunify with family members in the United States. In contrast, Trump deputies admitted roughly 55,000 migrants before Biden’s February 20 takeover.
Biden’s deputies — chiefly, pro-migration zealot DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — have also admitted many legal immigrants, plus at least 50,000 Afghans, plus many white-collar visa workers, and have also reduced deportations by roughly 90 percent.
The total number of arrivals recorded by border officials is greater than the census bureau’s estimated population increase.
The huge inflow of foreign workers, consumers, and renters will make it more difficult for ordinary Americans to earn good wages and to afford decent housing.
Breitbart reported December 20 on the pocketbook impact of the government’s immigration policy:
Hasit Patel is an Indian legal immigrant who operates the two-star La Quinta franchise budget hotel where [Monique] Rolle worked for roughly $8.50 an hour before she took her $15-an-hour job at Target.
Patel’s business plan depended on cheap migrant labor, according to what he told the Washington Post:
“[His] struggle to find [replacement] labor felt like a blow to his whole notion of what made America great. An immigrant from India, he believed that the health of the U.S. economy was protected by a constant refreshing of the workforce, an injection of striving immigrants willing to take on some of the unpleasant jobs that many Americans are loath to do — like cleaning [his] hotel rooms.”
Patel’s expectation was rational: From 1990 to 2017, the federal government inflated the labor force by adding roughly one migrant — both legal and illegal — for every three Americans who joined the workforce.
That economic policy of inflating the labor supply slowed in the 2008 crash and came to a sudden halt in 2020 when President Donald Trump closed the borders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Overall, the federal government imported 5 million fewer foreigners from 2010 to 2020 — including 3 million fewer from 2017 to 2020 — compared to prior decades, according to recent reports.
The Post report continued:
“I can’t compete with the [$15-per-hour] warehouses for wages,” Patel said. “The government should let us get people from India, even just for six months. The government has to realize there are certain job categories that American people don’t want to do anymore.”
The Post did not explain how Patel would import temporary workers from caste-divided India, where half the workers earn less than $100 per week. But the B-1/B-2 visa is used by some Indians to legally visit for six months — and illegally work while they are in the United States.
So, without a supply of very cheap workers from his home country, Patel reluctantly raised Americans’ wages “from $8.50 to nearly $11 an hour and offered more flexible schedules,” the Post reported.
Meanwhile, the GOP leadership has focused criticism on the migrants who cross the southern border. and has largely refused to spotlight the pocketbook damage to Americans caused by the massive inflow of foreign workers, consumers, and renters.
Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.
Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.
For many years, a wide variety of polls has shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
Gov. Abbott working to 'secure the sovereignty' of America with border wall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3MFaL2Rz9o
“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, or all those migrants wearing the Biden let us in shirts, you’d give him an A-plus, plus, but the American people would give him an F. The crisis we said our border was not only entirely predictable. It was predicted. I predicted it last fall 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 exactly what’s happened every month since the election.” SEN. TOM COTTON
From April 2020 to April 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. An overwhelming majority of those deaths came from opioids, and fentanyl smuggling has surged at the southern border since the start of Joe Biden's presidency.Joseph Simonson and Collin Anderson
Officials in Mexico believe the tide of laundered money could be as high as $50bn per year, a sum equal to about three per cent of Mexico's legitimate economy -- more than all its oil exports or spending on key social programmes. Internationally, money laundering represents between two and five per cent of global GDP, or between $800bn and $2tn annually, according to the UNODC.
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
China is America's enemy but Joe Biden's friend
By J. Marsolo
The corrupt media know the truth about China paying the Bidens and about the China fentanyl smuggled through Mexico. In addition to the China virus and China fentanyl, China steals our technology and intellectual property that costs our country between $300 and 600 billion in losses per year. The FBI reported in February 2020 that China is the biggest law enforcement threat to the United States and that China was seeking to steal American technology by "any means necessary."
The only thing tougher than moving illegal drugs
across borders is getting the profits back to
Mexico's cartels, U.S. officials said. Cash is heavy,
and transporting it exposes traffickers to lots of
risk. Putting it into the banking system is perilous,
too. The U.S. and Mexican financial systems have
been geared to detect dirty money.
Reuters reports that Chinese money brokers in Mexico have avoided the conflicts amongst the cartels themselves, and have (according to an unnamed DEA agent) "coordinat[ed] money contracts with both the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels on the same day" — no mean feat.
Brnovich: China Is ‘Intentionally’ Contributing to U.S. Drug Crisis ‘to Undermine our Country’
On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Arizona Attorney General and Republican senatorial candidate Mark Brnovich said that drug precursors used by drug cartels to manufacture meth and fentanyl pills are coming from China, and he believes China is doing so on purpose “to undermine our country and to undermine values.”
Brnovich said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:05] “I would remind everyone, including the Biden administration, that the cartels control everything that goes across our southern border. And whether that’s human beings or whether it’s these drugs that are killing our children, they are making a profit and they are pushing this into our country. And one of the things, Dana, I think that’s so underreported is that we know, as prosecutors, I was a gang prosecutor, federal prosecutor, the precursor drugs are coming in from China. China’s doing this intentionally, I believe, to undermine our country and to undermine values. And then the cartels get those precursor chemicals. They’re making meth, they’re making these fake fentanyl pills, and then they’re flooding them into our market.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Exclusive — Josh Mandel: Joe Biden’s Policies Benefit Beijing Because He Is ‘Personally, Financially Corrupted’ by China
Josh Mandel, Republican candidate running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Ohio, said on Thursday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with special guest host Jerome Hudson that President Joe Biden is “personally [and] financially corrupted” by his family’s financial dealings with China.
Mandel said Biden cannot be expected to serve America’s interests with respect to China given the president’s compromised status through his family’s dealings with China, as documented by Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, in Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.
“Let’s start with the fact that Biden is personally [and] financially corrupted,” Mandel remarked. “He is, his son Hunter, probably his brother, the lobbyist, their finances are so intertwined and dependent on the Chinese Communist Party that he’s completely, completely conflicted. So let’s start out with that, that he’s not in any position to make the right decisions for the American people.”
Mandel observed how the Biden administration’s suppression of domestic fossil fuel development — ostensibly to combat “climate change” — provides geopolitical advantages to China and Russia at America’s expense.
“[The Biden administration is] enabling oil and gas pipelines in Russia and leaning on OPEC while we’re sitting here in Ohio, in America, with an abundance of natural resources that he won’t let us drill and move,” Mandel said.
He noted that the Biden administration’s policies undermine America’s economy by making most Americans poorer through inflation.
He said Biden’s policies were “quadrupling inflation,” “increasing prices at the pump and the grocery stores,” and “paying people to stay home and drink Mountain Dew and play Xbox with our tax money instead of actually getting people back to work.”
The Breitbart News Daily podcast is available for listening and download via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
From the U.S. to China to the cartels
In a post last week on drugs and the border, I referenced the following quote from the DEA: "Due to China's currency control restrictions, Asian TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] have taken advantage of the availability of U.S. dollars belonging to Mexican and Colombian TCOs in the United States by acquiring the U.S. dollars in exchange for the payment of Colombian/Mexican pesos in the respective drug source country." A recent federal court conviction in Chicago and a Reuters article on that case explain how the scheme works, at least on a small scale.
The DOJ press release on that case explains that one "Xianbing Gan" was convicted on three counts of money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, in a scheme to move drug proceeds from the Windy City to China, and then on to drug traffickers in Mexico.
Reuters fleshes out the scheme. Moving vast sums of illicit drug money out of the United States is a difficult — and for the perpetrators, dangerous — task, as the article explains:
The only thing tougher than moving illegal drugs across borders is getting the profits back to Mexico's cartels, U.S. officials said. Cash is heavy, and transporting it exposes traffickers to lots of risk. Putting it into the banking system is perilous, too. The U.S. and Mexican financial systems have been geared to detect dirty money.
The scheme described bypassed all of those impediments. Gan's case was premised on the testimony of one of his conspirators, a Singapore national working out of New York named Lim Seok Pheng, who became a cooperating witness for the government after she was arrested in May 2018 at JFK on suspicion of laundering money.
Lim would collect vast sums of cash (between $150,000 and $1 million at a clip) from contacts in the cartels in New York and Chicago (as well as other cities, apparently), using burner phones and contact information. She would then work with U.S.-based Chinese merchants to convert the money to yuan in banks in China in real time. Lim would hand the merchants the cash, and they would transfer the money from their accounts in China to Gan's account in that country.
Why would those merchants be willing to do this? The Chinese government limits the amount of cash that its citizens can transfer out of the country to $50,000 per year, but authorities in that country would (likely) think that there was nothing amiss in transfers between two bank accounts in China. Oh, and the merchants got a premium on the money that they transferred, but there is no evidence that they were aware of the provenance of the cash they received.
To get the money from China to Mexico, Gan allegedly would then engage in the same sort of transfer on the southern side of the border. Cash would be transferred from Gan's account to those of Chinese merchants with access to pesos in Mexico.
Gan (who ran a seafood business out of Guadalajara, Mexico, exporting jellyfish to China) contends that he was a patsy for another Chinese national named Pan Haiping, who duped him into using his Chinese account to launder the money. Haiping is in custody in Mexico awaiting extradition to the United States on money laundering charges (using Gan's and other Chinese bank accounts) handed down by a grand jury in March 2019. According to U.S. authorities, the laundered money was then transferred to Mexican drug cartels.
Reuters reports that Chinese money brokers in Mexico have avoided the conflicts amongst the cartels themselves, and have (according to an unnamed DEA agent) "coordinat[ed] money contracts with both the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels on the same day" — no mean feat.
If all of this sounds familiar, it is akin to a "hawala" scheme, in which (overly simply) money is paid to a broker in the United States (a "hawaladar"), and a similar amount in local funds is provided to another individual abroad.
As the Treasury Department and INTERPOL have explained, hawalas are cost-effective (much more so than converting dollars into the local currency and then having it delivered abroad), efficient (taking one to two days — at most), reliable, avoid bureaucracy, and largely untaxable. Best of all — from the prospective of a drug TCO — hawalas leave no paper trail.
Hawalas came to the fore in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the "9/11 Commission") explained:
Al Qaeda frequently moved the money it raised by hawala. ... In some ways, al Qaeda had no choice after its move to Afghanistan in 1996: first, the banking system there was antiquated and undependable; and second, formal banking was risky due to the scrutiny that al Qaeda received after the August 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, including UN resolutions against it and the Taliban. Bin Ladin relied on the established hawala networks operating in Pakistan, in Dubai, and throughout the Middle East to transfer funds efficiently.
Note that hawalas and other similar informal schemes rely on "trust" between the remitter and the hawaladar, but the drug scheme described did not necessarily require such an archaic notion. To the degree that any trust was involved: (1) the scheme was lucrative for all involved, and they would necessarily have an interest in its viability; and (2) Mexican TCOs have their own means of ensuring compliance.
Interestingly, as per Reuters, such Chinese money launderers are undercutting their Mexican and Colombian competition by as much as half, because they can charge big fees (up to 10 percent) on Chinese nationals who are seeking to avoid that country's restrictive currency controls. This, in turn, "allows the Chinese money brokers ... to charge traffickers nominal fees of just a few percentage points. The money launderers still turn a handsome profit while locking in a steady supply of coveted dollars and euros from cartel customers."
The money is good. Lim, in her 2019 plea agreement on money laundering, admitted that she laundered approximately $48 million in drug cash with Gan and Pan Haiping from 2016 to September 2017, taking (according to the government) a .5 percent commission (or in the neighborhood of $240,000; Gan was convicted of laundering more than $530,000 in cartel cash).
Nor were they alone. Charges are pending in Virginia and Oregon against two other alleged Chinese money laundering groups.
That said, Reuters reports that this is not the only method that Mexican cartels use to launder their money, sometimes opting for "trade-based money laundering schemes". For example, that outlet explains that Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit said publicly in July that Chinese nationals who were laundering money for the Jalisco New Generation cartel used drug proceeds in order to buy bulk orders of shoes from China, which they would then resell in Mexico to get cash.
In any event, cartel money laundering by Chinese rings is a big problem for law enforcement. There is little or no visibility into the Chinese banking system for outsiders (the article describes the country as "a veritable black hole for U.S. and Mexican authorities", although the Chinese government contends it is willing to help, while "stress[ing] the need for the two countries to work on the 'principle of respecting each other's laws, equality and mutual benefit'"), and the sentencing memorandum in Gan's case (cited by Reuters) suggests that "Chinese money brokers based in Mexico 'have come to dominate international money laundering markets'".
Growing Chinese expat communities in the United States and Mexico — desperate to access their money back home — and cartels sitting on piles of dollars from illicit drug sales in the United States are creating opportunities for themselves. And problems for law enforcement.
President Lopez-Obrador and the Wall
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/president_lopezobrador_and_the_wall.html
Over the last few years, I've had conversations with friends in Mexico. We usually end up talking about the border. For us, the border is illegal immigration. For Mexicans, it's guns and cash corrupting a very fragile political system.
As a Mexican friend said recently, the cartels have the politicians in their pockets, especially in the small towns where many of these vans full of cash and guns drive through.
There are many reasons to build that border wall, as former Secretary of Education William Bennett said on Sunday:
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the
United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin,
according statistics from the Drug Enforcement
Administration.
"After 9/11 we shut down the border. When we shut down the border, drugs didn't come in," Bennett said. "If you shut down that border, if you close it off, if you build a wall, it can have a real and profound difference."
There is another reason, as any rational Mexican will tell you.
On a weekly basis, lots of cash and guns go south. They are the profits and rewards of the drugs going north. According to unofficial estimates:
Officials in Mexico believe the tide of laundered money could be as high as $50bn per year, a sum equal to about three per cent of Mexico's legitimate economy -- more than all its oil exports or spending on key social programmes. Internationally, money laundering represents between two and five per cent of global GDP, or between $800bn and $2tn annually, according to the UNODC.
It would be more difficult for money or guns to go south if you had a wall on the border.
So President Trump should pick up the phone and call President Lopez-Obrador. He should thank him for keeping the caravans in Mexico and discuss the benefits of the border wall. Why wouldn't the Mexican president support the wall? I'm sure that the Mexican army and police would love to see that wall go up.
The lack of a stable border hurts both sides.
PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Mexican Presidents Deny They Took Bribes from El Chapo
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2018/11/14/mexican-presidents-deny-they-took-bribes-from-el-chapo/
14 Nov 201898
Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal defense for JoaquÃn “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.
The drug lord is facing several money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York. In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes “including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”
Soon after the statements became public, Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said the statements were false and “defamatory.”
El gobierno de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal JoaquÃn Guzmán Loera. Las afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
— Eduardo Sánchez H. (@ESanchezHdz) November 13, 2018
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to social media to personally deny the allegations, claiming that neither El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him bribes.
Son absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones que se dice realizó el abogado de JoaquÃn “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) November 13, 2018
Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. 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 the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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
A HISTORY OF MEX GANGS
VERDUGO MEXICAN GANGS
https://unitedgangs.com/verdugo-gangsters/
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
SHARE
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment