Editors’ Note: If the reader is like us, this border chaos is beyond frustrating. The Biden administration and those supporting it act as if nothing is wrong. The administration and Congressional leaders regularly trot officials forward to say the border is “under control.” The outright lying and the choice to simply ignore the laws of the land are serious breaches of their oath of office. All this is made possible by the extremely narrow margin Democrats have in the Senate. This makes the current Senate race in Arizona of utmost importance.  The Prickly Pear endorses Blake Masters and we urge our libertarian friends not to waste their vote and instead, support the Republican candidate.

We have attached a video produced by Arizona U.S. Representative Andy Biggs above this article explaining the southern border crisis created by the President and the Democrat party in less than two years. The effects of this travesty will ripple across the nation for decades to come. The enormous human tragedy, the cartel enrichment and the damage done to countless U.S. citizens and economies throughout the nation are incalculable and a direct consequence of the attempt to secure permanent power by the Democrat party at the expense of the American people. Mark Kelly is unquestionably complicit in this lawless violation and should be removed from the U.S. Senate on November 8th.

Democrats are napping peacefully through the U.S.-Mexico “border” crisis that they engineered. Perhaps these data will snap them from their slumber:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that the Mexican cartels’ income from smuggling illegal aliens into America has soared from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion this year—up 2,500%.

If these criminals merged into a corporation, their 2022 gross revenues would rival that of—are you sitting down?—Fox Corporation. Fox News Channel’s parent company earned $12.91 billion in the year ended June 30, 2021, and gleaned $13.97 billion 12 months later.

This fact might awaken “Sleepy Joe” Biden and the lazy Left: Mexico’s human-trafficking cartels are now as big as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.

If Democrats still are dozing through the havoc of their no-border strategy, these figures might rouse them:

• Border Patrol agents apprehended 951,568 illegal aliens during President Donald Trump’s final 19 months in office. In President Joe Biden’s first 19 months, the Border Patrol encountered a staggering 3,588,877 illegal aliens—up a sickening 377%.

• In fiscal year 2020, the last one fully under Trump’s control, 69,000 illegal aliens were detected on the “border,” but got away into America’s interior. Fiscal year 2021 (four months of Trump, eight of Biden) witnessed 389,155 got-aways—up 464%. In fiscal year 2022 (all on Biden’s watch), got-aways hit 599,000—up 54% versus fiscal year 2021 and 768% compared with fiscal year 2020.

• “At least 266,000 unaccompanied migrant children/minors have been encountered at the southern border since President Biden took office, per [Customs and Border Protection] data,” Fox News Channel’s invaluable southern-frontier correspondent Bill Melugin explained via Twitter on Sept. 26. “That’s enough to fill up approximately three Rose Bowls.”

• Fourteen House Republicans wrote Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sept. 23 to complain that “between October 2021 and July 2022, more than 130,000 Venezuelan nationals were encountered after entering the United States illegally.” The Marxist regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, they added, “is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape, and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States.”

• Twelve U.S. senators contacted the U.S. Marshals Service about crooks cascading across the “border.” According to their Aug. 30 letter, “So far in FY22, [Customs and Border Protection] has apprehended over 9,000 criminal aliens, including 53 for homicide or manslaughter, 283 for sex crimes, and almost 900 for assault, battery, and domestic violence.”

• During Trump’s fiscal years 2017 through 2020, 11 terrorists on the watchlist were captured at the border—two, six, zero, and three, in those respective years. Under Biden, Border Patrol apprehended 15 in fiscal year 2021 and a terrifying 78 in fiscal year 2022, through Aug. 31. September’s figures will follow. How many terrorists got away? Who knows?

• According to data from the United Nations’ Missing Migrants Project, during Trump’s final 20 months in office, 712 illegal aliens died on or near the U.S.-Mexico border. For Biden’s first 20 months, that number is 862—up 21%.

These fatalities range from drownings in the Rio Grande to the barbaric demise of 53 illegal aliens whose four smugglers let them roast to death inside an abandoned truck. Officials discovered this carnage on June 27 in San Antonio, Texas. That day’s high temperature: 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Fentanyl killed some 71,000 Americans in 2021, up 23% compared with 2020. For those aged 18 to 45, fentanyl leads COVID-19, car wrecks, suicides, and every other cause of death.

It’s tragic enough when witting users fatally overdose on cocaine, heroin, or other fentanyl-laced contraband. Sadder still are those innocently poisoned via counterfeit, toxin-tainted “Adderall,” “Xanax,” and other phony pharmaceuticals.

Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine. Two milligrams in one pill can kill.

Under Trump, Border Patrol’s fentanyl seizures for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 (through Aug. 31) totaled 7,595 pounds. Under Biden’s equivalent dates in fiscal year 2021 and 2022: 24,062 pounds—up 217%.

Mexican cartels freely traverse the “border” to transport this venom. Biden Democrats couldn’t care less.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.