Illegal immigrants pose a huge problem, but they aren’t the biggest threat to our security south of the border…
With the recent election of the 45th President of the United States, Americans are looking to Donald J. Trump as both Savior and the Devil wrapped into one person. Many see his border wall as racist and inhumane at worst, or a waste of money at the very least. On the other hand, some see it as means to increase security along the border and end the flow of illegal immigration. But I would argue that both sides have inherently flawed ideas on this particular topic.
Is the border situation a national security issue? Yes, it most certainly is. Will building a wall make Americans safer? Maybe. But it may not be any more effective than current our border security in keeping out the biggest threat to Americans in our own backyard, the Mexican drug cartels.
That’s right, the biggest threat to national security along the border is not illegal immigrants, but the terrorist organizations that continue to operate within Mexico and the United States. It’s their enterprise and one that generates $13.6 to $49.4 billion dollars of revenue per year. That is a threat to our security, and it only continues to grow.
For the cartels, it’s not just about the drugs, it’s about the power that comes with having control – and they will do anything to keep it. They will dismember. They will rape. They will torture. They will bribe. They will kill anyone that stands in the way.
Between 2006 and 2013, the Mexican War on Drugs killed over 120,000 people with 27,000 reported missing. Per year, that is approximately 17,000 deaths and 4,000 missing. In contrast, ISIL in 2014 murdered 9,000 and wounded 17,386. These numbers should be appalling to anyone. This is happening in our backyard– right across the borders of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, not somewhere in the Middle East
In Texas, the Los Zetas cartel actively traffic humans, drugs, and weapons in and out of Mexico. According to an article by Alicia Neaves, Jose Luis Rodriguez testified about a massacre he witnessed while working for the Zetas cartel where 300 people were killed under the orders of the cartel because a government informant was believed to be with the group. They were ordered to kill anyone associated with him. When Rodriguez asked about Jaime Abascal Reyna’s son, who had gone missing, a Zetas commander told him to stop asking because they just “cooked him.” Reyna even went to the Mexican government to ask for help, but was turned away and told to stop asking.
This is not even the worst of it. The cartels operate in the same terroristic fashion as that of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram, and ISIL. They use Facebook and Twitter to post propaganda and executions, and even recruit members from inside of social networks. Beheadings are a common practice within the cartels, and posting them on social media networks is even more common, similar to the way the Islamic State produces execution videos to disseminate their message of control to the world.
They constantly violate the basic human rights of both Mexican and American citizens. Thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked inside and out of the United States. Some are drug mules. Some are prostitutes. Some are killed and have their organs harvested to be sold to the highest bidder. The cartels have set up operations spanning across almost every metropolitan center in America, with operatives carrying out and disseminating orders from the commanders in Mexico. The national security threat that the Mexican drug cartels present is one we simply cannot afford to ignore.
The only way to solve the immigration crisis is to help our neighbors to the south eradicate the terrorist organizations that continue to plague Mexico. With the cartel operations killing more people each year than ISIL, it’s hard justifying spending billions of dollars on both the US-Mexico border wall and continuing operations in combating Islamic extremism without putting more effort into stabilizing Mexico.
The rise and spread of the Mexican drug cartels is the same, if not more dangerous to national security, as Islamic extremism, illegal immigration, or, according to the left, Donald Trump himself.
Coy Mack is an OpsLens contributor, writer, and filmmaker. Coy is also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, serving in Afghanistan with the 2nd Battalion 7th Marines in 2008.
