By Dr. Rich Swier
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton posted the below on twitter:
Drug cartels have operational control of the US border with Mexico. https://t.co/TIZrlBp9VC
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) October 24, 2022
What does Fitton mean by “operational control”. According to Cornell University’s School of Law Operational control from 15 CFR § 960.3,
[T]he ability to operate the system or override commands issued by any operations center or station.
It means that the drug cartels now have control of our Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol along the Mexican-U.S. border.
On September 7, 2022 The Council on Foreign Relations provided a list of the largest drug cartels,
Sinaloa Cartel. Formerly led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Sinaloa is one of Mexico’s oldest and most influential drug trafficking groups. With strongholds in nearly half of Mexico’s states—particularly those along the Pacific coast in the northwest and near the country’s southern and northern borders—and operations in as many as fifty countries, it has a larger international footprint than any of its Mexican rivals. In 2017, Mexican authorities extradited Guzmán to the United States, where he is serving a life sentence for multiple drug-related charges. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on eight members of the group, which is now led by Ismael Zambada García and El Chapo’s sons, known as “Los Chapitos.”
Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Jalisco splintered from Sinaloa in 2010 and is among Mexico’s fastest-growing cartels, with operations in more than two-thirds of the country. According to the DEA, the “rapid expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the group’s willingness to engage in violent confrontations” with authorities and rival cartels. U.S. officials estimate that CJNG supplies more than one-third of the U.S. drug market.
Beltrán-Leyva Organization (BLO). The group formed when the Beltrán-Leyva brothers split from Sinaloa in 2008. Since then, all four brothers have been arrested or killed, but their loyalists continue to operate throughout Mexico. The organization’s splinter groups have become more autonomous and powerful, maintaining ties to Jalisco, Juárez, and Los Zetas.
Los Zetas. Originally a paramilitary enforcement arm for the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas was singled out by the DEA in 2007 as the country’s most “technologically advanced, sophisticated, and violent” group of its kind. It splintered from the Gulf Cartel in 2010 and held sway over swaths of eastern, central, and southern Mexico. However, it has lost power in recent years and fractured into rival wings, the most prominent being the Northeast Cartel.
Guerreros Unidos (GU). Based in southwestern Mexico, Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors) broke away from the BLO in 2009 and became involved in the heroin trade. The group is known to have a partnership with the CJNG, using the same transportation networks to move drug shipments to and from the United States.
Gulf Cartel. Its base of power is in northeast Mexico, especially the states of Tamaulipas and Zacatecas, and it is thought to be working with CJNG members in those areas. In the past decade, the group has splintered into various factions, diluting its strength as it battles for territory with Los Zetas. In 2021, three warring Gulf factions announced they had reached a truce, insisting that they wanted to maintain peace in Tamaulipas.
Juárez Cartel. A long-standing rival of Sinaloa, Juárez has its stronghold in the north-central state of Chihuahua, across the border from New Mexico and Texas. In recent years, the group has splintered into several factions, including La Línea, which controls street-level enforcement.
La Familia Michoacána (LFM). Formed in the 1980s, LFM has its base in western Mexico’s Michoacán State. In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama designated the group’s members as “significant foreign narcotics traffickers” and imposed financial sanctions on it under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. While still active, LFM has weakened and fragmented in recent years.
Los Rojos. Another splinter group of the BLO, Los Rojos operates in central and southwestern Mexico and relies largely on kidnapping and extortion. Although several of its leaders were arrested between 2019 and 2020, the group remains active, and along with Guerreros Unidos, has been linked to the 2014 disappearance and murder of forty-three students from a university in Guerrero State.
According to the Drug Enforcement Agencies’ (DEA) National Drug Threat Assessment published in March, 2021,
The trafficking and abuse of illicit drugs inflict tremendous harm upon individuals, families, and communities throughout the United States. The violence, intimidation, theft, and financial crimes carried out by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), criminal groups, and violent gangs pose a significant threat to our nation. The criminal activities of these organizations operating in the United States extend well beyond drug trafficking and have a profoundly negative impact on the safety and security of U.S. citizens. Their involvement in alien smuggling, firearms trafficking, and public corruption, coupled with the high levels of violence that result from these criminal endeavors, poses serious homeland security threats and public safety concerns.
Mexican TCOs are the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they control most of the U.S. drug market and have established varied transportation routes, have advanced communications capabilities, and hold strong affiliations with criminal groups and gangs in the United States.
Illicit fentanyla—produced in foreign clandestine laboratories and trafficked into the United States in powder and pill form—is primarily responsible for fueling the ongoing opioid crisis. Fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills continue to be trafficked across the country and remain significant contributors to the rates of overdose deaths observed across the country. As inexpensive, potent fentanyl continues to push into established heroin markets, fentanyl will augment, and in some cases supplant, white powder heroin in various domestic markets.
Methamphetamine price and purity data, as well as law enforcement reporting, all indicate methamphetamine continues to be readily available throughout the United States. Seizures along with drug poisoning deaths involving methamphetamine continue to rise—purity and potency remain high while prices remain relatively low.
Availability of cocaine throughout the United States remains steady, likely based on the high levels of coca cultivation and cocaine production in the Andean Region of South America. Leading indicators of cocaine availability, including laboratory analysis of cocaine exhibits, cocaine seizure data, and price and purity of the drug, indicate that cocaine availability is steady.
Controlled Prescription Drugs (CPDs)b remain a prevalent concern within the United States—availability remains constant while abuse levels decreased from the previous year. CPD diversion continues to decrease across most categories at the national level, but some states report an increase in the number of incidents. The number of opioid dosage units available on the retail market and opioid thefts and losses reached their lowest levels in nine years.
Mexico remains the most significant foreign source for marijuana in the United States; however, in U.S. markets, Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana.
On September 27, 2022 the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported,
As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.
Of the 390 cases investigated during this period, 51 cases are linked to overdose poisonings and 35 cases link directly to one or both of the primary Mexican cartels responsible for the majority of fentanyl in the United States – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). In addition, 129 investigations are linked to social media platforms, including Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and TikTok. These results build upon the One Pill Can Kill Phase II results announced by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in December 2021.
Human Trafficking
On February 17, 2014 Human Trafficking Search warned,
Human trafficking is commonly referred to as the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, second only to the lucrative and illicit drug trade. In the past decade human trafficking has become a global epidemic with an estimated 21 to 30 million people currently enslaved. Since human trafficking is so lucrative, many drug traffickers are doing what any money-motivated businessperson would do: expanding their business into a new market; namely, human trafficking.
Supply and Demand
Following the economic laws of supply and demand, Latin American drug traffickers and criminal organizations have decided to increase profits by diversifying their market to include the trafficking of drugs, labor and sex. Drug cartels have been accused of using their illicit markets to traffic Central American children for the purpose of sexual exploitation in the United States. Entire towns whose economy was once funded by profits from the illicit drug trade now make their living off the procurement, trafficking and exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. San Miguel Tenacingo, a small Mexican town located just outside Mexico City is commonly known as the city that sex trafficking built where one city official estimated that 30-50 percent of the town’s population are involved in the illicit sex trade. Being involved in the sex trade is not condemned; in fact it is almost encouraged. A local university interviewed young boys from San Miguel Tenacingo and found that 16 percent wanted to be a pimp when they grew up and 44 percent had friends who said they wanted to be one.
Sale of Human Bodies
Traffickers and criminals involved with organized crime that sell human beings see no difference between abusing a woman’s body by either forcing her to swallow bags of drugs or forcing a woman to have sex with hundreds of men. For traffickers, it doesn’t matter which product is being sold, both drugs and sex are lucrative industries. The difference between the two markets is that a shipment of drugs can be sold only once before it is consumed, but a human being’s body can be sold and resold for years at a time. As one trafficker explained I sell crack, I sell it, it’s gone, I sell a girl, she’s still there. Gangs in the United States are increasingly turning to selling children for sex. The problem has become so common that in the past year the leaders of three of the most violent and brutal gangs in the United States have been jailed for their involvement with child sex trafficking. Weak human trafficking laws in the United States coupled with harsh drug laws make it less risky for gangs and criminal organizations to traffic humans. The sad truth is that for traffickers, the more money that can be made for the least amount of risk is the better option, which is the reason drug traffickers have moved into sex trafficking.
Read full report here.
The Bottom Line
Open borders = more drugs, more human trafficking, more prostitution, more gangs, more illegal alien terrorists and more crime.
The drug cartels have operational control of our southern border because Biden, Kamala Harris the “border czar, the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA and ICE have turned control over to the most dangerous and ruthless of gangs.
Biden and his administration have willingly given operational control of our borders to the cartels and our enemies.
98 people on the terrorist watchlist crossed the border into the U.S. in FY22 — that we know of.
That is nearly 4 times higher than the last five years combined.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 25, 2022
Biden’s open borders policy is killing Americans and will, if left unchecked, destroy our national sovereignty. This is not by happenstance. Rather it is the plan to destroy our Constitutional Republic and replace it with a dictatorship. Biden is importing the third world to make America a third world country.
©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.
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