{"id":1654325,"date":"2022-09-23T06:32:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T10:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1654325"},"modified":"2022-09-23T06:34:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T10:34:18","slug":"the-border-crisis-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-in-mexico-a-cartel-crisis-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-border-crisis-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-in-mexico-a-cartel-crisis-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Border Crisis Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg. In Mexico, A Cartel Crisis Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-border-crisis-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-in-mexico-a-cartel-crisis-looms%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1654325&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that apprehensions of illegal immigrants\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbp.gov\/newsroom\/stats\/southwest-land-border-encounters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">surpassed 2.1 million for the fiscal year in August<\/a>, with more than 203,000 apprehensions last month alone, marking six straight months of southwest border arrests exceeding 200,000.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the shocking volume of arrests at the border, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BillFOXLA\/status\/1571533661413183488?s=20&amp;t=WyhCgI_NZWqOakKRBfz5ig\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dramatic footage<\/a> of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande or lining up by the hundreds along stretches of the border wall (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AliBradleyTV\/status\/1572943122723926016?s=20&amp;t=7ctmBjgiHvbcvNVdKCeI6g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">or scaling it<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n<p>That crisis, put simply, is the gradual takeover of the Mexican state by cartels. I hesitate to call them \u201cdrug cartels,\u201d 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\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/4ax479\/mexico-sinaloa-cartel-water\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the control and distribution of water<\/a>\u00a0in drought-stricken parts of the country.<\/p>\n<p>These twin crises are connected. Although the border crisis is a direct result of Biden\u2019s policies, the cartels are exploiting those policies for profit. One estimate from Homeland Security Investigations puts the figure at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/25\/us\/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$13 billion annually<\/a>, up from just $500 million in 2018. That is to say, illegal immigration has been industrialized by these cartels and their smuggling networks. It is not too much to say they have turned the southwest border into a vast black market, not just for deadly drugs such as fentanyl, but also for illegal immigration.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texaspolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2022-09-RR-SST-Abrazos-no-Balazos-The-Mexican-State-Cartel-Nexus-paper1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation<\/a>\u00a0(where, full disclosure, I once worked and am today a senior fellow) sheds some much-needed light on how the cartels have accomplished this. Their involvement in migrant smuggling \u2014 a vast enterprise that involves transportation, surveillance, logistics, accounting, and stash houses on both sides of the border \u2014 is a natural extension of their increasing involvement in nearly every facet of Mexico\u2019s economic and political life.<\/p>\n<p>The report, whose author has remained anonymous for safety reasons, chronicles the recent history of deep collusion between the Mexican state and the country\u2019s most powerful drug cartels: \u201cThe unfortunate reality is that criminal cartels have burrowed their way into the government \u2014 and vice versa. Well-meaning public servants, of whom Mexico has many, are powerless against a nexus of senior officeholders, societal elites, and criminal cartels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rot in the Mexican state, the report makes clear, goes to the very top. In 2018, just before President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto left office, Ivan Reyes Arzate, a high-ranking member in the Mexican Federal Police, was found guilty in U.S. federal court on charges of obstructing a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation of international drug trafficking and money laundering. The case \u201crepresented the first time a high-level foreign law enforcement officer was held criminally accountable in a U.S. courtroom for interfering with a transnational organized crime investigation,\u201d according to the TPPF report.<\/p>\n<p>But if Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s time in office was marked by a curtailment of U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation, Mexico\u2019s current president, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, has sought to shut down such cooperation almost entirely. Thanks to a new law pushed by L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration aimed at curbing the operations of foreign agents (clearly aimed at the DEA), decades of U.S.-Mexico bilateral cooperation has been effectively ended. In addition to this new law, L\u00f3pez Obrador in April\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/americas\/exclusive-mexico-shuts-elite-investigations-unit-blow-us-drugs-cooperation-2022-04-19\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shut down an elite anti-narcotic unit<\/a>\u00a0that had worked with the DEA for 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, L\u00f3pez Obrador has, since taking office, pursued a posture of passivity toward the cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, the country\u2019s most powerful. In so doing, L\u00f3pez Obrador has transformed his na\u00efve campaign slogan,\u00a0<em>abrazos no balazos<\/em>\u00a0(\u201chugs not bullets\u201d), into a policy framework that can only be understood as a rebuke of the United States in favor of criminal elements within Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What is also different now than in the past, the TPPF report says, is that the cartels \u201cincreasingly supplant the legitimate sovereignty of the Mexican state with their own \u2014 often in cooperation with major elements of that state. The qualitative difference since 2018 has been the near-open role of the current Mexican president in allowing, and\u00a0<em>perhaps even participating in<\/em>, that cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that sounds outlandish, it is not because the facts don\u2019t support such a conclusion but because corporate media in the U.S. are for the most part unwilling or unable to cover the issue in depth or accurately convey its implications for America.<\/p>\n<p>The implications are this: As the Mexican state succumbs to the cartels, Mexico\u2019s problems will become America\u2019s problems. That doesn\u2019t just mean a worsening border crisis but a breakdown of law and order all up and down the border, on both sides of the Rio Grande, and a worsening drug crisis in American cities far from the border. It means the corruption of Mexican officialdom will gradually spread to American officialdom, just as the operations of Mexican cartels have spread to every corner of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>What to do about all this? The first step is for the United States to stop treating Mexico like a partner or a peer with whom we can work together to address common challenges. Our entire posture has to shift. We have to begin treating Mexico less like an ally and more like a hostile neighbor. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, to his credit, this week took the extraordinary step of issuing an executive order\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gov.texas.gov\/news\/post\/governor-abbott-designates-mexican-cartels-as-terrorist-organizations&#039;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations<\/a>. While that might not do much on its own, it at least sends a signal to Washington that it is time for the federal government to do the same.<\/p>\n<p>There is of course\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2017\/02\/23\/time-stop-talking-border-wall-start-stabilizing-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a historical precedent for this<\/a>, and indeed the relatively peaceful interregnum of the past 80 years is a departure from the historical norm of U.S.-Mexico relations. We are now returning to the norm, whether policymakers in Washington realize it or not.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that apprehensions of illegal immigrants\u00a0surpassed 2.1 million for the fiscal year in August, with more than 203,000 apprehensions last month alone, marking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1654325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1654325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1654325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1654325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1654325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}