Recent news stories have highlighted the results of having cartels operate with impunity across the Western Hemisphere. There are very few limits to the reach of cartel members within the US or south of the border as they continue to murder government officials and ordinary citizens indiscriminately, transport millions of migrants across borders, and ship drugs across the world. The cartels have been operating this way with very little pushback from politicians in the Americas or their own countries.
In fact, the people that bear the main brunt of the consequences of the actions of the cartels are ordinary citizens. Governments are losing money battling drug use, fighting homelessness, investigating murders, and spending money on security services. This money could be better spent on combating inflation in the poorest countries in the Americas or building up the economies of Colombia or Brazil.
Major news outlets are slow to pick up stories about killings and there has been very little condemnation from US politicians and international companies that are quick to highlight the unfairness in the system within the United States. The silence from most politicians and news organizations about the murders of environmentalists, prosecutors, and females across the region highlight the ability of cartels to work without limits.
Femicide Nation
While the Biden Administration laments the Russian incursion of the Ukraine and the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas as a war crime, American news outlets are silent on the war crimes south of the border. The disappearance of Debanhi Susana Escobar Bazaldúa near Monterrey has sparked protests around the country but these types of disappearances are nothing new for the country.
Mexico has seen everything from murders of individual women, mass disappearances on the border, and sex trafficking into the US. Other stories include Ingrid Escamilla who was skinned in Mexico City, Victoria Salazar had her neck broken by police officers in Tulum, and mass murders of women in Juarez in the 1990s. Murders are often underreported in the country so the death toll in the country is likely much higher than what is being reported.
There are 20,000 missing women in the country and hundreds of thousands more have left Mexico. The murders of Mexican women continue to rise in a country where 90% of the killings go unsolved. The President of Mexico has taken a lax attitude in combating drug cartels with his famous slogan of using “Hugs Not Bullets”.
This situation will not change until the cartels are gone. The cartels will continue to kill women at an alarming rate unless the United States takes real action against these transnational organizations. The Guardian has termed this situation perfectly when they referred to the country as Femicide Nation.
Unchecked Immigration
Cartel members have developed new cash streams by smuggling people from across the world through the Americas. This business has been lucrative for cartel members as they charge migrants thousands of dollars to transport them across Mexico and over the border. Some cartels take the money of migrants and force them into sex trafficking or require them to work for American gangs to make up for their passage over the border.
No matter what the result is for the migrants crossing the border, cartels have been making money hand over fist. The number of apprehended migrants has reached over 234k in April which is up from over 221k in March. The number of migrants apprehended is at a 22-year high and continues to rise as President Biden tried to repeal the Title 42 Covid measure that allows for easy deportation of migrants and end the Migrant Protection Protocols that sends migrants back to Mexico to wait for their trials.
President Biden’s rhetoric on immigration has caused a spike in the number of people trying to cross the border. This situation is similar to when President Obama deployed the National Guard to the border after he touted his Dreamers Act that allowed children that were brought into the country to remain in the US. This policy caused a wave of children to flow across Mexico by themselves. The US government has strict regulations on how long they can hold these minors and releases them to family members on the northern side of the border.
The Democrat’s policies are in sharp contrast to President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy on migration. President Trump struggled to bring down immigration as it rose to near term record highs in 2019. Once Covid hit, he was able to use his rhetoric as well as new Covid measures to delay immigration into the US. Migrants that have been turned back by Title 42 are able to attempt to cross the border again as they are not officially deported. So this policy is only a temporary deportation for many migrants.
It is important to note that Customs and Border Protection only assume that they capture approximately 70% of the number of people that cross the border. The CBP’s assumption that they capture 70% of the number of people crossing the border is likely an overestimation as it is unclear how many people are coming into the country. These numbers will continue to spike as long as President Biden does not enforce a zero-tolerance policy or continues to attempt to roll back President Trump’s policies on immigration to give hope to migrants waiting to cross.
This migration has grown to an unsustainable level, according to President Obama, but will likely only get worse in the coming years. Inflation has begun to devastate the US economy as energy, agriculture, and other commodity prices rise. Americans may struggle with these price increases but they can diversity their expenses by buying cheaper goods or stopping the majority of their spending on non-critical goods.
The poorest people from countries like Mexico live on a few dollars a day. They will struggle to diversity their spending as meat, corn, and wheat prices rise in their country. These countries have people struggling to make ends meet and are likely to either move to the US or destabilize their own governments in their own countries.
The people of Mexico and other manufacturing nations will struggle even more than Americans because they cannot bargain for pay increases. The salary increases in the US have been rising at approximately 5%. This would be an astounding rate if actual inflation was not over 9%. But Americans can always quit their job in favor of a new one in their city. Most countries do not have this luxury as they only have multinational companies as their employers.
Major international companies in Mexico have been reluctant to honor the USMCA (NAFTA 2.0). The heads of official unions have signed contacts for auto workers that are just above minimum wage in Mexico even as inflation is raging in the country. There have recently been instances of workers setting up independent unions but this is rare and it is unclear if the government will allow these unions to continue. Multinational companies have been slow to allow workers to unionize and bargain for higher wages. If wages in manufacturing countries do not rise quickly, immigration will rise dramatically as people leave their own countries for more stable economies.
Tunnels
Another tunnel was found between the US/Mexico border in Tijuana and San Diego. These tunnels are becoming increasingly sophisticated and come equipped with air conditioning, reinforced walls, ventilation, electricity, and rail lines. This particular tunnel was used to smuggle meth, cocaine, and heroin across the border but these tunnels are used to move all kinds of drugs and people across the border.
Border tunnels are popular between California and Arizona with Tijuana being the most popular area to find these tunnels. It is unclear how many tunnels crisscross the border or why CBP does not bring a spudder rig out to the border to drill down a few hundred feet to identify where these tunnels are located. The Sinaloa Cartel continues to move record amounts of drugs and people across the border with little trouble from the authorities.
The tunnels were once commonplace across the border but have been replaced by smaller drug traffickers that prefer to ship drugs by USPS through the mail. The head of the USPIS has said that they will not check packages coming across the border even if they suspect that the package may contain drugs. This has made the mail system in America the cheapest and easiest way for small and mid-size drug traffickers to ship a few pounds of drugs into the country and across the US. These small and midsize drug traffickers even give a 100% guarantee when shipping through the mail system in America.
There are zero consequences for the small and mid-size drug traffickers that ship drugs across the border. This is because there are zero checks on personal packages and manufacturing areas in Mexico and Central America that would curb drug imports. As the death rate in the US rises and homelessness is climbing by double digits in certain parts of the US, politicians are slow to prevent drugs from coming across the border.
TEUs
Massive quantities of drugs continue to flow out of Central and South America unabated. Cartel members have found new revenue streams by sending massive quantities of drugs to Europe and Australia as costs are higher there. The United States is still the number one destination for meth and fentanyl but it is unclear where drugs are going as shipping containers are rarely searched.
One of the most popular ways for cartels to ship tons of drugs is with shipping containers. These shipping containers, or TEUs, cross oceans and borders by the millions each day. These shipping containers pass through customs as they are filled with goods that are regularly imported into the country. The images above show the sheer quantity of shipping containers that are currently on the ocean right now and do not count the number of containers that cross by land between countries. These containers are rarely searched.
The CBP has found drugs in cereal boxes, fire extinguishers, and hidden in the walls of the container themselves. As cross-border trade continues to grow between Brazil and Argentina and the rest of the world, cartel members will continue to expand their revenue streams to the West. Record drug busts have been occurring in Europe and Australia as cartels continue to send drugs across the oceans.
Texas Governor Greg Abbot recently stopped cross-border traffic between Mexico and the US on the premise of inspecting trucks. This led to protests by truckers who spend hours trying to cross the border only to have their perishable cargoes spoil. These protests involved these trucks blocking both sides of the border to prevent all traffic from crossing for days while Texas checked trucks tires and registrations. This policy also drew rebukes from businesses trying to move goods into the US as agriculture products withered in the south Texas heat. These same businesses stay mum on the war crimes happening just across the border.
Nuevo León Governor Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda has agreed to improve security on their side of the border near Nuevo Laredo where a US consulate was recently attacked. This agreement has borne little fruit as the number of migrants apprehended crossing the border still rose by 2.2%. This is nothing compared to an increase of 39.1% in San Diego, 21.4% in El Central in California, 401.5% in Yuma, 47.2% in Tuscon, 56.2% in El Paso, 161.2% in Del Rio, and 29.9% in Rio Grande Valley.
It is unclear if this policy will be effective in the future as companies will move more freight by rail to bypass these inspections on trucks. Drugs will continue to flow north until the cartels begin to feel the consequences of their actions. Homelessness will not decline, education will continue to suffer, and crime will rise unless America can stop drugs from flowing into the country.
Replacing Government Officials
Recently a prosecutor from Paraguay was murdered on his honeymoon in Colombia. Marcelo Pecci was one of the top prosecutors in Paraguay and brought cases after the Brazilian PCC gang, drug trafficking to Europe, and probes into members of the military and government. This man was murdered on his honeymoon for trying to stem to rise in crime that was occurring in his country. Very few companies that donated millions of dollars so BLM can buy mansions in Los Angeles have taken action on his murder.
Many news stations failed to highlight this story or bury their own stories as they cover the Ukrainian war, but these murders have been occurring all over the Americas. Pecci’s death is just one of many deaths across the Americas as police killings in Ecuador, killings of political candidates in Colombia, murders of mayors in Mexico, the deaths of journalists in Mexico and across the Americas, as well as the killings of environmentalists, where half the environmentalists deaths were in Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines, continue unimpeded.
These killings are commonplace and are often not reported by mainstream news websites in the US. If they are reported, they are either not on the front page or are quickly replaced by less sensational headlines like the Johnny Depp trial. They are also not condemned by major corporations that do business in these countries. Companies like Starbucks Inc. continue to fight for justice and the environment in the US but fail to speak up about the war crimes that are occurring south of the border.
As the number of these murders grow, cartel members will have more opportunity to take control of these countries and turn them into narco states. These murders are allowing cartels to replace high-ranking officials with their own members or to pressure these officials into working for them. America has shown little appetite for arresting these officials or removing them from power. They prefer to depose countries in the Middle East or advicate that President Putin should be assassinated in Europe but are mum on the deaths in their own backyard.