Criminals Profit When Illegal Aliens Crash the Border



Amid the chaotic crush of migrants at America’s southern border, one group is reaping multimillion-dollar profits: Central America’s criminal drug cartels.

“A lot of Central American narcotics cartels — transnational criminal organizations — are facilitating smugglers in moving aliens, rather than drugs because it’s more profitable right now,” said Thomas Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Homan, who is said to be President Donald Trump’s choice for the role of the first-ever national “border czar,” said the festering humanitarian crisis “is making these cartels very, very rich.”

John Davidson, a reporter who traveled to the Guatemala-Mexico border, confirmed Homan’s account.

“From the moment Central American migrants cross Mexico’s southern border and begin their journey north, the entire process is a massive, multifarious, black-market, moneymaking machine,” he wrote in the Federalist.

“Cartels generally require every man, woman and child who passes through their territory on the way to the U.S. border pay a tax, which is often included in the total fee smugglers quote to Central American families,” according to Davidson. “Without paying this tax [which Homan calls a “Plaza Fee”], migrants cannot cross the Rio Grande, and in many cases are at risk of being kidnapped or otherwise exploited.”

It’s easy money for the cartels. Using a rough, as well as conservative, estimate of Plaza Fees, Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies figures that the 144,000 illegal aliens who crossed the U.S. border in May paid $144 million to the cartels for final safe passage through northern Mexico.

“[The cartels] don’t have to grow a single poppy. They don’t have to make a single pound of meth. They just get the money, and if you don’t pay you’re dead,” Arthur says.

In a belated attempt to stanch the Central American migrant flow at its source, Mexico has pledged to deploy 6,000 troops to its 541-mile border with Guatemala. How effective that effort is over the long-term remains to be seen. The Guatemalan government – like Mexico’s — has been neck-deep in the drug- and human-smuggling industry for years.

While Washington politicians and presidential aspirants ritually bash Trump and bemoan the plight of migrants lining up to enter the U.S., a do-nothing Congress refuses to pass laws to stem the swelling tide of asylum seekers, or even to effectively manage the crowds once they’re here. Where’s the outrage over the criminal facilitation and profiteering of this humanitarian crisis?

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13 Comments

  1. avatar

    THIS ONSLAUGHT OF THOUSANDS OF FOREIGNERS FROM MANY NATIONS NOW IS AN ATTACK ON OUR ECONOMY ————-THE LAWS THAT OBAMA PASSED WERE MEANT TO CRASH OUR SYSTEM AND THE FAR LEFT POLITICIANS ARE COMPLICIT IN DESTROYING THIS NATION., FOR THEIR OWN POCKETBOOKS.
    OUR PRESIDENT SHOULD SEND THOUSANDS OF TROOPS AND PUT UP QUARTERS FOR THESE TROOPS AND MAN THE BORDERS UNTIL THE WALL IS BUILT ——————-NO ONE COMES ACROSS THE BORDER THAT IS NOT A LEGAL CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. PERIOD THEN ALL THESE PAID FOR ILLEGALS COMING NORTH WILL GET THE MESSAGE AND GO BACK HOME ————INCLUDING THE CRIMINALS

  2. avatar

    So far this year, American taxpayers have foot the bill to the tune of over $100 Billion Dollars for illegals!!! How much are they going to squeeze us? We are already paying enormous taxes and it’s affecting our lifestyles. It also affects the restaurant industry because the first thing to go when money is tight is going out to dinner! This has to stop! WE can hardly ford health care but we have to GIVE it to these people for free! Free college in NJ!! Free legal advice to illegals to fight deportation!! Meanwhile, a woman getting a divorce from a dead beat husband can’t get legal assistance for free to save her and her kids lives!!! I’m sick of this!!

    • avatar
      Jesus alvarado on

      Real true , special in NY , we are must expensive city to live , my property taxes increase for the
      Last 8 years we have stupid mayor call him D Blasio , increase my property taxes , than famous grease ball mario Cuomo, increase subway, and bridges , to support illegal , with food stamp , free medication must re elect trump for 2020

  3. avatar
    Stephen Russell on

    Countering Cartels:
    ID US money sources, funds.
    ID Front groups
    Seize assets.
    Charge 5K per head or family entry into US
    Scan & ID on Mexican side.
    ICE ATF, IRS raids in US for cartel funds.
    Name names
    Make public
    offer Bounty for
    Then see illegal traffic reduced

  4. avatar
    Stephen Russell on

    Why cant we charge 5Kper head to enter US, thus they have to have 10K to enter US: 5K for baddy & 5K for US entry.
    Benefits:
    Deter trade
    Illegals want 1 way In IE pay 5K.
    Undercut cartels.
    Undercut organizers for illegals.
    Defund traffic?

  5. Pingback: The Democrats’ Positions on Immigration Are Starting to Worry a Lot of Democrats – Dr. Rich Swier

  6. avatar

    It’s pretty hard to dissuade people “at least intelligent people” that the psychotic left is not working hand, and hand with the cartels. I wonder what PELOSI is getting in kickbacks for every ounce of DEADLY NARCOTICS getting onto the streets of our COUNTRY. This is their true motivation for open borders.

  7. avatar

    Gee, look at all those poor little children forging their way to the US in search of a “better life.” These are scumbag criminals; DO NOT detain these scumbags at the expense of the taxpayers; DO not HOUSE and FEED them at taxpayers’ expense. SEND THEM back at the border to wherever they are coming from; These are NOT asylum seekers; These are CRIMINALS who will become America’s enemies and advocates for a government overthrow – DO NOT DETAIN them; SEND THEM BACK: It is too costly to the American taxpayers to continue to detain, house and feed these scumbags; JUST SEND THEM TF back; It’s past time that we station OUR MILITARY at the border to DO THEIR JOB of protecting this country from INVADERS! Station ARMED Military at the border; Their OATH calls for them to protect this country from Foreign and Domestic enemies, and the time has arrived to do just that.

  8. avatar
    William Webb on

    We can always go back to the tariffs thing if Mexico doesn’t want them to wait in Mexico until their aylum hearing comes up. They hopped right to it the last time. We could send a couple of these crooked democrats down there to keep them company, and coach them on what to say. They don’t want to stay im Mexifornia, because it’s going to slide off into the Pacific 🙁

  9. avatar

    Truly, it is simply beyond understanding that our country is deliberating allowing these nations and they greedy people to abuse, scam and exploit our country like this, and the USA, the most powerful country in the world cannot stop this?? That is not true. Our own Congress does NOT WANT to stop this invasion and exploitation of America. Every action of Congress, especially the Democrats encourages and supports all of it, including the million plus similar foreigners from similar nations they import legally into the USA every year.

  10. avatar

    Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro was on Meet The Press this week. Just another lying con man. His solution to the border crisis, now that he and his fellow Democrats admit there is one, is to hire more judges but allow all those claiming asylum to wait in this country. A real newsman, Chuck Todd is nothing more than a liberal suck-up, would have asked him isn’t it true that no one in your party wants anyone in the country deported, so what happens when they are denied asylum.

    That’s because Castro has been repeatedly bashing Trump the last couple weeks for saying he is going to have ICE start deportations. The truth is that the people Trump wants to deport are those whose claims were turned down and were ordered to leave the country but didn’t. So what Castro proposes would only add to the flood of those being allowed into the country, while he and the rest of the Democrats cry a river about any deportations.

    He also says his proposals are not open borders because we would still have 650 miles of fencing and agents at the border. That’s only a third of the border with a fence or wall, and our agents are so overwhelmed with the family units that endless miles of the border are left open for long periods of time. We have no idea who is crossing then because they are not claiming asylum. But they still are coming in huge numbers.

    Castro calls open borders “a right wing talking point”. Says one of the masters of talking points. Call it whatever you want, play all the word games you want. What he and his fellow Democrats want are unlimited entry, no detention and only a court date for years down the road which 90% don’t show up for, and no deportation or penalty of any kind when you don’t. It’s as simple as one and one equals two. No detentions and no deportations equals open borders. It’s that simple.

    • avatar
      Teresa Dixon on

      I believe Castro is from Cuba and is here to try to destroy the U.S.A. also