Mexico's Standoff

May 11, 2023

The U.S.-Mexico border is a crime scene, not a humanitarian crisis. In recent days, tens of thousands of people have gathered there to illegally cross the border before rule changes make entry more difficult from now on. Today, on May 11, America lifts its Covid 19 health restrictions, called Title 42, which were used to expel 2.6 million illegal entrants during the pandemic. But this week, a swarm of 135,000 people collect along the border based on misinformation spread by drug cartel smugglers that the border will be easier to cross from now on. “Our border is not open,” say American officials, but few listen, and President Joe Biden has sent 1,500 more “boots on the ground” to help police and National Guardsmen interdict illegal crossings. American migration officials are also scrambling to create legal pathways in Central America for immigration and refugee claims. But the root cause of this perennial problem is Mexico — a “failed state” run by drug cartels and corrupt officials — who cannot, or will not stop the flow of drugs and illegals through their country. The U.S. migration crisis is not about immigration. It’s about crime and Mexican collusion.

The link between cartels and Mexico’s security forces became even more obvious in recent weeks. “Mexico has let tens of thousands of people cross its territory on their way to the American border since early April, government data shows, [representing] a major uptick before the expiration of a U.S. immigration measure that has kept most migrants from being able to claim asylum in the United States. The increase comes as local aid groups and migrants say that over the last several weeks people heading north have been crossing more easily into Mexico from Guatemala, the main route to the United States, with Mexican security forces abandoning some of their outposts on the country’s southern border,” wrote The New York Times.

The U.S. has leverage over Mexico, as its principal trading partner, but doesn’t exercise it and, as a result, is held hostage to a kleptocracy run by criminal organizations. Cartels have lied to their “clients” by saying the replacement of Title 42 will make entry easier. The facts are that from now on, those who cross illegally will no longer be able to pretend they are asylum seekers, fleeing persecution. Rules now stipulate that asylum claims will only be allowed if made outside the United States, as proscribed by international law. For years, non-Mexican migrants have illegally crossed into Mexico then the U.S., claimed asylum, and been housed in America while their cases were adjudicated. Smugglers taught them how to use this gambit and in recent years even suggested they simply abandon their children at the border so they would end up in American shelters where relatives or accomplices could pick them up.

The willingness of American migration officials to allow asylum claims without evidence of persecution abrogates the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, signed by Washington. The Convention states that a refugee is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” And its accompanying “Safe Third Country Agreement” requires asylum seekers to make their refugee claim in the first safe country they escape to after leaving home — Mexico in this case. Put another way, it says you cannot claim to be a refugee unless you are a refugee, and you cannot claim refuge while living in a safe country to get into another safe country. This is what the Biden regime is finally going to enforce, but the cartels and their Mexican co-conspirators try to break this initiative by opening up the floodgates.

Hordes of migrants and their children walking through Mexico to the U.S. border last month. Associated Press

The unprotected border and the industrial scale of Mexico’s smuggling “industry” make this problem insoluble without building a wall, physically or virtually. And Americans must understand that anyone who has gotten safely to the U.S.-Mexico border is not a helpless, fleeing victim but has done so in order to defraud the U.S. government with the help of the cartels who charge exorbitant fees. They pay fees to get to the border and pay more to be illegally escorted across it. Worse, cartels don’t cherry pick their clients and they also smuggle undesirable criminals, fugitives, terrorists, and drug dealers into the U.S. They also extend credit to families by employing them in criminal enterprises once inside America to work off their fees. And their smuggling network has also been “weaponized” by Russia and others who pay enormous fees to insert operatives or terrorists inside the United States and European Union.

Solutions have eluded due to four misconceptions. Until the U.S.-Mexican border calamity is recast as crime, there will be no solution, only stopgaps. Secondly, America must understand that its insatiable appetite for illicit drugs has caused this influx and people-smuggling is a lucrative sideline. Thirdly, Washington’s failed “war on drugs” has turned Mexico into a criminal enterprise. Since 2006, some 300,000 drug-related murders have been committed there and 66,000 people have gone missing across the country. Gangs have murdered thousands of Mexico’s politicians, judges, priests, police, journalists, and soldiers over the years and become the best smugglers in the world. They are also multinational and bring people and contraband from all over the world into America and Europe for profit.

A crime scene: Ciudad Juarez in Mexico

The border is easily crossed by people from all over the world. Figures now show that “in November 2022, a majority of the migrants encountered at the border (63 percent) were from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle region,” reported the Pew Foundation. This month, Washington asked Canada to tighten its border too by re-imposing visa requirements on Mexicans entering Canada. But the Trudeau government has dithered for some reason even though illegal crossings from Canada into the U.S. are increasing. Currently, anyone can board a plane from Mexico or anywhere, fly to Canada, enter and sneak easily into the United States along the undefended northern border. Mexicans aren’t the only ones taking advantage of this backdoor entry.

And the fourth reason preventing solutions is that policymakers and members of the public don’t differentiate between economic immigration – which built the country and is admired – and “humanitarian” migration or refugees. Those who pay fees to get across illegally are not refugees who’ve fled persecution but are queue-jumpers or fugitives, unwilling to apply properly for bona fide immigration status. They should be refused at the border out of hand -- in favor of those who have applied and are qualified to get in.

Put simply, America does not have an “immigration crisis”. It has a “Mexico crisis”, a “human smuggling crisis”, and a “phoney asylum-seeker crisis”. All are rooted in America’s national drug problem that remains unaddressed and has created monstrous cartels that must be dismantled. Sending troops this week to protect America’s southern border is an admission that policies have failed and the country remains unprotected. Now America must put the boots to Mexico and fix its domestic drug problem or the border will turn from a crime scene into a permanent war zone.