Immigration

Governors demand Biden take action on the border

Published

3 years ago

October 6, 2021

Mission, Texas – Gov. Greg Abbott – along with nine other governors – demanded Wednesday that President Biden take action regarding the spiraling crisis at the U.S. Mexico border. Abbott warned that the administration’s failure to address the crisis it created is threatening the nation’s national security. He also revealed that the White House has yet to respond to a letter sent by 26 governors on September 20, requesting a meeting with the administration to seek solutions to curtail a tsunami of migrants expected to reach the U.S. border before the end of the year.

The governors stood side-by-side in a open field at Anzalduas Park, in Hidalgo County, Texas. The group spoke of how the crisis is effecting their states from the rise in drug addiction and deaths to the increase of human trafficking. Under a blazing Texas sun in an area near the Rio Grande River in Mission, Texas – known for significantly high illegal border traffic – the governors reiterated that the resolution to the crisis must be non-partisan. They also asked why neither Biden, nor Vice President Kamala Harris have done anything to resolve the situation but instead establish policies that make it worse.

The governors were flanked by dozens of National Guard personnel, who positioned their combat vehicles – Humvees and trucks – in a semi-circle around the lawmakers. Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and local law enforcement also stood by as each politician made their case for more enforcement and federal assistance.

Abbott, along with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, as well as governor’s Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Brad Little of Idaho, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Greg Gianforte of Montana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma spoke to the press.

“The Biden Administration’s open border policies have led to complete chaos at the southern border, and pose a threat to the safety of Texans and all Americans,” said Abbott. “Texas has stepped up to keep our communities safe and mitigate this crisis ourselves, and our efforts have been made stronger by the support and assistance of governors from across the nation.”

He also unveiled a 10- point plan to mitigate the crisis.

Continue Title 42 public health restrictions
Fully reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols
Finish securing the border
End catch and release
Clear the judicial backlog
Resume the deportation of all criminals
Dedicate federal resources to eradicate human trafficking and drug trafficking
Re-enter all agreements with our Northern Triangle partners and Mexico
Send a clear message to potential migrants
Deploy more federal law enforcement officers

Texas resources have been stretched thin and the White House has failed to protect the American people, surmised Abbott. He, along with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, said Biden doesn’t need Congress to enact any immediate border security measures, suggesting that with “the stroke of a pen” he can protect the country.

Ducey told me shortly after the press conference that they are sending “a direct and clear message to President Biden that this is a federal issue.” He added that “the resources have to come from the federal government…when is Washington going to wake up and pay attention?”

“It’s not just a border crisis, it’s a national security crisis,” said Ducey, just before boarding a Texas DPS armored boat patrolling the Rio Grande. “Border security is national security.”
Ducey is right. The porous border has led to an extraordinary increase in the trafficking of the deadly narcotic Fentanyl into the United States. Fentanyl deaths are up

In the September letter, the governor’s noted the “the negative impacts of an unenforced border policy on the American people can no longer be ignored.”

“Border apprehensions are up almost 500% compared to last year, totaling more than 1.3 million—more people than the populations of nine U.S. states,” the letter stated. ” Approximately 9,700 illegal apprehensions have prior criminal convictions. Cartels and traffickers are making $14 million a day moving people illegally across the border. More fentanyl has been seized this fiscal year than the last three years combined—almost 10,500 pounds of fentanyl when only 2 milligrams prove fatal. This is enough to kill seven times the U.S. population.”

At the end of the letter the governors requested that “due to the emergent crisis, we respectfully request a meeting as soon as your schedule allows within 15 days. While we know your responsibilities as Commander in Chief are substantial, ending the national crisis and securing our states must be a priority.”

Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw said at the press conference “when we see this type of mass influx of migrants to our state, the cartels profit by exploiting the situation. Unless we act, there is no stopping them from reaching communities across the country with their drugs and violence.”

Neither Biden, nor Harris, who was appointed the border czar to resolve the crisis by Biden, responded to the letter.

You can follow Sara A. Carter on Twitter @SaraCarterDC

Immigration

Sinaloa Cartel Offering Huge Pay Days to College Chemistry Students to Produce More Potent Fentanyl

Published

9 hours ago

December 5, 2024

Sara Carter Staff

An in-depth report conducted by the New York Times follows how the Sinaloa Cartel is recruiting young college students studying chemistry to make Fentanyl. The Times report included interviews with seven fentanyl cooks, three chemistry students, two high-ranking operatives and a high-level recruiter. All of them work for the Sinaloa Cartel, which the U.S. government says is largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The Times details the information it learned from one of the recruiters:

Before the Sinaloa Cartel ever approaches a recruit, it scouts out its prospect.

The ideal candidate is someone who has both classroom knowledge and street smarts, a go-getter who won’t blanch at the idea of producing a lethal drug and, above all, someone discreet, said one recruiter in an interview.

In months of searching, he said, he’s found three students who now work for him developing precursors. Many young people just don’t meet his standards.

“Some are lazy, some aren’t bright, some talk too much,” said the recruiter, a lanky middle-aged man with square glasses, who has worked for the cartel for 10 years. He described himself as a fix-it man, focused on improving quality and output in the fentanyl business.

To identify potential candidates, the cartel does a round of outreach with friends, acquaintances and colleagues, the recruiter said, then talks to the targets’ families, their friends, even people they play soccer with — all to learn whether they’d be open to doing this kind of work. If the recruiter finds someone particularly promising, he might offer to cover the student’s tuition cost.

“We are a company; what a company does is invest in their best people,” he said.

When the cartel began mass-producing fentanyl about a decade ago, the recruiter said, it relied on uneducated cooks from the countryside who could easily get their hands on what people in the business call “recipes” for making the drug.

The Times also writes about one of the students recruited to be a fentanyl cook by the cartel:

The cartel offered the student $1,000 as a signing bonus, the woman said. She was terrified, but she said yes. The lab where she works is about an hour’s flight from Sinaloa’s capital, on the small aircraft the cartel uses to transport cooks to work. Her bosses told her that her job was to manufacture more powerful fentanyl, she said.

The fentanyl coming out of Mexico has often been of low purity, a problem the recruiter attributes to the desperate rush to satisfy Americans’ appetite for the synthetic opioid.

“There was such an explosion of demand that many people just wanted to earn money, and those manufacturers just made whatever without caring about quality,” the recruiter said. But in a competitive market, he said, the cartel can win over more clients with a stronger drug.

The first-year student said she had experimented with all manner of concoctions to increase fentanyl’s potency, including mixing it with animal anesthetics. But none of her attempts at producing fentanyl precursors have worked.

A second student, who is a sophomore chemistry student, detailed how he had been recruited on campus, but had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He said the lab was in the mountains, in the midst of trees and covered by a tarp that had been painted to look like foliage, so it couldn’t be seen from a helicopter.

After three days of work, he said, one of the men in charge told him that he wasn’t there to make fentanyl. He was the newest member of a research and development lab, where everyone was working to figure out how to make precursors from scratch. He said he immediately started worrying about inadvertently causing an explosion.

“They don’t tell you how to do it — they say, ‘These are the products, you’re going to make them with this, it could go wrong, but that’s why you’re studying,’” he said.