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Texas Department of Public Safety director Col. Steven McCraw reports that human traffickers have been pushing large numbers of undocumented immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border in targeted locations to distract the Border Patrol with the lengthy process of detaining excess numbers of immigrants.
At the same time, cartels easily smuggle drugs, clients and victims of trafficking into Texas through areas temporarily left without security, and then sneak profits back the same way, McGraw noted.
Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian said there is a stampede to cross the border with little being done to reduce that flow. Meanwhile, human trafficking, the influx of drugs and other crimes are on the rise.
Krikorian has led the center, an independent non-partisan research organization in Washington, D.C., since 1995.
“The same trends are in place where the numbers are going up at the border slowly,” he said. “They jumped at first when Biden took over and now they're been going up more slowly. It's now become a worldwide gold rush to the border, not just from Mexico and Central America. They were from Haiti and Cuba, but also Brazil and Ecuador, and also from Africa and from the Middle East and Romania.”
It has exacerbated human trafficking, Krikorian said.
“The trafficking and smuggling are two different things,” he said. “Smuggling is when you as the illegal immigrant are part of the deal. In other words, regular business deal. Trafficking is where there's some kind of coercion or trickery where you’re kidnapped or deceived into some kind of slavery in a brothel or forced labor on a farm or something like that.
He said it's inevitable that trafficking has increased with an increase in the number of immigrants and a decrease in Border Patrol's ability to respond.
The increase is apparent in Texas.
“Trafficking has increased in Texas and in Arizona and frankly, nationwide, because they're not going just to Texas,” he said. “Some share of the illegal immigrants crossing in the [Rio Grande] Valley are going to stay in Texas. They'll go to, Dallas or Houston, but probably most are going elsewhere. They're going to Florida and to the Washington area, Chicago and L.A.”
The groups bringing people into the country are evolving, he said.
“There's the connections to the various criminal groups,” Krikorian said. “We know that the big Mexican cartels are not the ones doing the smuggling. Generally speaking, there are separate smuggling gangs. What they do is they pay a tax to the cartels, and often the cartels and their gang affiliates in the United States will use this open border to get to smuggle in gang members. So it's probably some of those. In other words, gangs are doing some of the smuggling and the trafficking, but gangs are also using this opportunity to get people into the United States and on top of all of that, gangs are actually recruiting in these shelters where these so-called unaccompanied minors are being and they're recruiting new gang members in the United States.”
According to Reuters, many cartels in Mexico that previously stole oil and sold drugs are shifting to a new line of work — human trafficking. Mexico is an origin, transit and destination country for the sex trafficking industry, and has recently seen an uptick in gangs shifting to dealing in people. Cartels that have shifted to the human trafficking industry include the oil pipeline-tapping and Guanajuato-based Santa Rosa de Lima gang, as well as the Mexico City Tepito Union drug gang.
Fox News recently reported that Mexican cartels make as much as $14 million a day smuggling individuals across the border and into the United States. Retired Tucson Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal recently said trafficked individuals become slaves to pay to be smuggled across the border.
“A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings. Some are essentially indentured servants and they’re working off this debt for a long period of time,” Villareal said. “In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt.”
Santiago Nieto, head of Mexico’s financial intelligence unit, is heavily involved in the investigation and arrest of cartel members. He recently said many gangs are shifting to sex trafficking as their predominant source of revenue.
“A lot of criminal groups are mutating. When one possibility ends, they start to link up with other kinds of criminal activities,” Nieto said.
He estimates trafficking has become the third-largest illicit activity in Mexico behind drug and arms dealing.
According to a 2016 report from the University of Texas at Austin, there are 78,996 minor and youth victims of human trafficking and 234,457 victims of labor trafficking in Texas at any given time, totaling 313,453 victims of human trafficking.
Along with a spike in illegal immigration, the crisis at the border has brought an increase in other crimes related to cartel criminal enterprise. The West RGV News reported earlier this year that generational South Texas rancher Whit Jones III noted that immediately following the Biden administration rollback of Trump era policies, he has seen a “significant increase” of human trafficking and smuggling.
While states have sent troopers and law enforcement officers to the border, Krikorian said, ultimately, it’s up to the federal government to take charge.
“The federal government is the one that has to change this policy. The states can't enforce federal immigration law,” he said. “But (Texas) Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to do what he can at the state level."
Krikorian said Biden seems to have “no idea what to do with it. And he seems to want to play it down. They don't they don't really want to discuss it."
Instead, it’s up to others to deal with the crisis. Texas Department of Public Safety deputy administrator for media and communications Rachael Pierce said DPS has deployed around 1,000 troopers to assist at the border.
They have made more than 3,400 criminal arrests and more than 53,300 migrant apprehensions and referrals, Pierce said.
“There have been 546 vehicle pursuits, and DPS has seized more than 4,800 pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine, 936 firearms and more than $7.8 million dollars in the areas of the Rio Grande Valley, Del Rio, Big Bend and El Paso,” she said.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the CBP apprehended nearly 189,000 aliens at the southwest border in the month of June alone. This marks a 5% increase in apprehension since May, and is the highest number of apprehensions in a single month in the last 10 years.
Brooks County Sheriff Urbino “Benny” Martinez noted a growing number of farmers and ranchers in his county, located near the southern border, have found the dead bodies of women and children. Martinez said that they were likely abandoned by smugglers.
According to former President George W. Bush aide and longtime Republican Party strategist Karl Rove in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, since Abbott’s order to intensify border patrols in March, the Texas DPS has made 1,800 arrests for human trafficking, as well as other crimes such as drug smuggling.
Rove examined two viewpoints regarding the border crisis. On a June 25 visit to El Paso, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that “we have seen extreme progress over these last few months.”
On June 30, Abbott stated that “the Biden administration is completely failing” in its attempt to correct the border crisis. Addressing this disagreement, Kelly Hancock, chairman of the Texas State Senate Veterans Affairs and Border Security Committee, concluded that “facts say the governor is right and make it difficult to figure out Ms. Harris’ definition of ‘extreme progress.’”
According to a June poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC, 51% of Americans disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of “the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border,” whereas only 33% approve of his actions.
A recent Pew study revealed 68% of Americans think the current administration is doing a “bad job” at dealing with the border crisis and 79% of respondents believe it is very or somewhat important to reduce the number of asylum seekers at the border.