People with any sense at all know that all the reports being given by bigwigs in the Obama administration about securing our border with Mexico are laughable at best, horribly dangerous at worst. At the official level just below the Obama insider crowd, there's a bit more honesty, even if occasionally unintentional. The new head of ATF has blown a few whistles about Project Gunrunner, and now a high-ranking Customs and Border Protection official has made a big admission about illegal immigration.
The border has long been porous and a fertile ground for "coyotes" (Mexican nationals who assist illegal immigrants to cross into the United States). Coyotes are not nice people, nor are they unofficial ambassadors of good will merely trying to help their fellow Mexicans find a better life in the United States. They charge huge fees for their assistance, often rape the women, and with their connections on our side of the border, exploit them further by changing the terms of the agreement, and/or forcing them to work off their debt in coyote-controlled businesses. Those businesses often include prostitution and drug-dealing.
Still, next to the Mexican drug cartels, the coyotes are rank amateurs, almost gentle souls. And those drug cartels did not fail to notice this source of an easy takeover and a new, lucrative business for them to exploit. Illegal immigrants were often used as "mules" for the cartels. Now the cartels have figured out that if they own the mule, they can traffic in guns, drugs and the human beings they use to transport the contraband.
A week ago, Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar admitted rather freely that "drug cartels control several major areas along our border with Mexico." When asked "do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the United States," Aguilar replied: "There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur on both sides of the border (emphasis added)."
Many of the coyotes have been recruited into the cartels, and those who have not are either dead or about to be. Aguilar compared the cartels to the Mafia, which started off small, largely dealing in prostitutes and illegal booze, but grew sufficiently and became sufficiently organized to take over many of the other criminal enterprises run by smaller, more local thugs. The Mexican drug cartels still make the majority of their money off drugs, but human trafficking is now big business as well, and they have determined that business belongs to them.
Deputy Director Kumar Kibble (no, I did not make that name up) of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, the former INS) confirmed Aguilar's view. Speaking of the cartels' expansion, Kibble said: "They, of course, control the plazas, the approaches that facilitate smuggling into this country--the cartels, of course, control the territory and the approach and tax other criminal ventures that may be operating in their area of responsibility. So there is certainly that kind of involvement as well." Another local official added that though it was far less organized, there was cartel control of remote areas on the American side of the border once the illegals have crossed into US territory.
This all contradicts what Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano said back in April. "Given the statistical framework, the border is not overrun or out of control." She then said that those who disagree are just trying to score political points. Apparently that includes two high-level officials within agencies under her DHS umbrella.
Considering that over a quarter-million illegals have been caught in just the six months prior to the ICE and CBP officials' statements, Napolitano is living in a dream world. Aguilar concluded his remarks with a very pointed statement: "Do Not Be Fooled (the name of the Border Patrol initiative to pull the benevolent costume off the cartels' activities) into thinking that individuals being brought into this country, putting their lives into the hands of smugglers who are careless and heartless, are being well treated. The possibility exists that they could be placed into human slavery, sexual exploitation, forced labor, and other types of slavery that unfortunately and tragically we know exists within the borders of our country."
Monday, July 25, 2011
Feeling Safe? Not On The Southern Border.
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24 comments:
excellent post, Hawk. I mentioned a few weeks ago how the great British fiction writer Frederick Forsyth got into this topic in his latest novel "The Cobra." Now Tom Clancy is traveling this road in his newest "Against All Enemies." I find this telling because both of these guys have unusually good sources in the intelligence communities, and as such, tend to be ahead of the curve on these things.
Your post confirms the worst, and I am certain the lame streams will be vastly under-reporting this one If the Republicans have any sense, they should make this a campaign issue. Certainly, it is a problem that needs to be attacked, and I really think it can be "marketed" to our Hispanic voters in a way that doesn't make them feel like their whole ethnic identity is being targeted.
HAWK
Good job of highlighting more of bo's continuing failure. The illegal immigration problem is one area where change would have been applauded. Of course the word slavery is not used but by any other name the illegals in many cases are just that. Even a lot of our fellow citizens are marginally guilty of that sort of exploitation. When some one hires an illegal ,say to do yard work, and is only willing to pay the tiny-est compensation they are exploiting as surely as a slave owner.
I find the attitude of bo re slavery past to be a real oxymoron.
His friend the Muslim world have always been the largest owners and traffickers of slaves both past and present. In the Muslim world women are property. A Muslim man considers his wife, daughters and concubines to be his property.
The definition of a slave is property just reverse the order of the definition and here we are in today's world with slaves.
Both the cartels and the other group need to be brought under control.
But trying to secure the border and stop the influx of illegal immigrants is racist and hurts Hispanics. Or something like that.
Human trafficking is one of the worst activities ever. Back when National Geographic wasn't shilling for the environmental lobby, they had a really heart-rending article about the situation. And again, the state of affairs on our border with Mexico is NOTHING compared with the Mexican/Guatemalan border. Coyotes and immigrants alike are killed on a regular basis--and yet the human tide keeps coming.
Tennessee: And then Hollywood will make movies out of both novels, substituting neo-Nazis for the drug cartels and their allies.
The Republicans have to stop worrying about "offending" Hispanics. Playing defense on the issue only strengthens the position of the radical immigrationists, and doesn't take into account the huge number of Hispanics that don't like illegal immigration any more than we do. But it is also important not to be anti-Hispanic or entirely jingoistic about the issue.
We really do need a comprehensive immigration reform plan, just not one that even faintly resembles the Democrat plan for blanket amnesty.
Tehachapi Tom: Slavery is more than chains. One is just as much a slave when his freedom is taken away and he is forced to do that which he would not do otherwise. As the old saying goes: "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." The fact that slavery is illegal doesn't alter the fact that the cartels are creating slavery in spite of the law.
Obama ignores slavery in the real world in order to fight a war over slavery that was won nearly 150 years ago.
T-Rav: I wonder what would happen if we merely adopted Mexico's immigration policy, en Espanol no less, and made it our law. Mexico's current stance is "do as we say, not as we do."
I am with the crowd that believes we must have a coherent and sensible immigration policy, but without secure borders, no policy will work.
Even Thomas Jefferson, a Francophile if ever there was one, said that nothing terrified him more than the idea of a million Frenchmen suddenly showing up on our shores unwanted and uninvited.
The border drug and human trafficking battles are not Carter's "moral equivalent of war." It's real war, and this administration cripples our ability to fight it.
Lawhawk, This is shades of Pancho Villa all over again.
Hawk - I agree, it's just I've always felt Republicans have been poor communicators of their issues, just like the liberals try and call taxes revenues. Instead of letting Democrats define us as taking away medicare and social security, our spokespeople need to keep hammering that we are trying modernize a systyem so that their will still be medicare and social security left.
With hispanics, the cartels and cayotes are making other Hispanics their primary targets, as well as unfairly blackening the eye of hard working legal immigrants. Don't permit the other side politically to demagogue and define who we are. I think this is a potentially strong issue and we are on the right side of it.
LawHawk, in a way I sympathize with Mexico's predicament; passing millions of people up our direction is probably what's keeping the country from falling apart altogether. But that doesn't mean we should collude with them in that policy.
As far as the Hispanic vote goes, screw it. California's never going to go our way regardless, Texas will continue to do so, and Arizona, New Mexico, Florida etc. will go for or against us based on other issues, at least in the next election. I agree that we shouldn't just give them the finger and walk away, but we shouldn't pander away our national security either. There are plenty of patriotic Mexican, Cuban etc. immigrants who vote based on multiple issues; there's no reason to think everyone with a Spanish surname has immigration as their top priority.
Andrew: So, where's General Blackjack Pershing when we need him?
T-Rav: All true. Mexico needs to get its own house in order rather than constantly putting ours in disorder.
I have spent much of my life in communities where there are large Hispanic populations, and those who are here legally (and many are second and third generation) are unhappy about what illegal immigration does in their neighborhoods as well as their standing in the general population. Most of them have exactly the same concerns we have, and and see illegal immigration as only making things worse. Six of my eight grandkids have Spanish surnames, but neither they nor their fathers consider themselves to be anything but American.
Tennessee: I couldn't agree more. The Republicans are doing a terrible job of communicating, and really do look like immigration ethnocentrists and fiscal Scrooges. The Republican leaders have to learn that appearance is as important as reality. If it looks like conservatives are anti-immigrant and hard-hearted on the poor, it doesn't matter that they are actually more concerned about helping those people than the Democrats.
And you are also right on who most of the victims of the cartels and coyotes are--other Mexicans. It's much like the fact that most black crime affects other blacks, but conservatives who want law and order allow themselves to be painted as racists.
Well, he's not in the White House, that's for sure!
LawHawk,
Just from a humanitarian standpoint, this is unacceptable.
The only way I can envision the Republicans being on the "perceptible" right side of things is exposing the way the illegal immigrants are being exploited. Convince the American people that as long as the "freebie" welfare goodies are given to illegals, we will continue to have a class of people (illegal immigrants) in slavery to another mafia-style cartels located in Mexico.
Not only that, but also convince the American People that the Democrat leadership prefer the status quo. They prefer not to change this world of prostitution, slavery, drugs and murder. They even helped supplied the cartels with weapons.
Until it is "perceived" the Republicans are behind the efforts to stop this illegal immigrant exploitation not much will change.
Just stopping the freebie welfare crap will help.
Andrew: And from what I can tell, he's not in the Pentagon either.
Joel: That is essentially what I'm proposing. The MSM is complicit in hiding these stories, and the Republicans need to get them out there where people will save their sympathy for the exploited illegals instead of encouraging the coyotes and the cartels.
The wise man said:
"What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying? What if they had a good idea just who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn't be ejected. Furthermore; what if Suns' ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink? And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?"
I love this, it perfectly illustrates the absurdity of the open border bozos, shut the border down now! stop the invasion.
great post, brother. you've said what those of us who live border states have known for years. it's a despicable occurrence that most folks shade with fairytale dust. *they just come for a better life* nothing about crossing the border illegally is good. and most times it's horrifying.
Stan: And what if the security guards were selling assault rifles and hand grenades to the incoming horde? Might as well go all the way.
Patti: Like everything else they do, the Democrats promote nostalgia about bygone eras that never actually existed. In the 40s and 50s, most of the illegals were doing just what the Democrats are claiming they're doing now. Some still are. Today, most are here for the free ride and to join their gangster friends There were little or no freebies back then like there are now. If they came into the country then illegally, and managed not to get caught, they had to work and abide by the law or else. A huge percentage of them actually earned something like amnesty, but even at that, it was rarely granted.
The current invasion got its kick-start with the creation of the Johnson Great Welfare Society. Ronald Reagan made one of his few mistakes going along with the big amnesty plan, believing that it would be a one-time-only thing. I'm sure that's not the decision he would make today.
LawHawk,
Reagan's mistake was in trusting the Democrats to close the door.
Joel: True. But back then, there were still a few Democratic politicians whose word actually meant something. Reagan was able to work with liberals like Tip O'Neill because once a deal was struck, it stuck. That preceded the era of "it all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
New information on the fast and furious debacle. Guns have been found at crime scenes, 122 to be exact. Also, do you think Obama knows about this? Intimidation is never pretty.
In related news, your drunk, you call a governor thinks illegals deserve aid.
Joel: The scandal is growing faster and furiouser than we can keep up with. They're not going to be able to hide this much longer.
As for Brown, he's not drunk, he's just high on life. He's been willing to spend massive amounts of money on illegals for most of his political life. He has supported in-state tuition for illegals in our state colleges and universities for as long as I can remember. Better to be here illegally from Oaxaca that to be here legally from Omaha.
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