The Border Crisis Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg. In Mexico, A Cartel Crisis Looms
BY:
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
Amid record numbers of illegal border-crossers, a larger crisis looms in Mexico with dire implications for the United States.
This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that apprehensions of illegal immigrants
surpassed 2.1 million for the fiscal year in August, with more than 203,000 apprehensions last month alone, marking six straight months of southwest border arrests exceeding 200,000.
Nothing like this has ever happened before. The 2.1 million figure represents an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 1.7 million, set in fiscal year 2021. That is to say, every year President Joe Biden has been in office has been a record-breaking year of illegal immigration. Biden’s policies are directly responsible for the ongoing border crisis, which will continue unabated until those policies change. Whatever the number ends up being for 2022, the number for 2023 will almost certainly be higher.
But the shocking volume of arrests at the border, and the
dramatic footage of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande or lining up by the hundreds along stretches of the border wall (
or scaling it), can blind us to another, less obvious crisis unfolding on the Mexican side of the border that we need to understand if we hope to craft policies that will put an end to mass illegal immigration.
That crisis, put simply, is the gradual takeover of the Mexican state by cartels. I hesitate to call them “drug cartels,” because what these criminal organizations do goes far beyond the manufacture and trafficking of narcotics. In addition to
drugs, Mexican cartels are now involved in industrial agriculture, port operations, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and even
the control and distribution of water in drought-stricken parts of the country.
With Cartels Looming, The Border Crisis Is The Tip Of The Iceberg