President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), by releasing thousands of illegal migrants into the interior of the country soon after they are apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, is effectively aiding the cartel business, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) assessed after a two-day visit to McAllen, Texas, last week.
Biggs, a lawmaker in the border state of Arizona for nearly 20 years, explained to Breitbart News after his visit that the federal government under Biden is functioning as a “logistics” arm for cartels, the criminal organizations who, as Breitbart News has chronicled and Texas government officials like Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) have warned, are often connected to the smugglers who operate in illegal entryways to the U.S. from Mexico.
“When you get to the logistics, it’s how to move your product from the depot to the delivery site,” Biggs said. “In previous times, you would hire the cartel. The cartel would subcontract to the coyote, effectively, who was either an employee or a subcontractor, and that coyote’s jobs was to deliver the product, which was the human being, the human being trafficked to the location.”
The Arizona congressman detailed what he perceived as a shift in coyote, or human smuggler, activity. “Now what’s happening though — and this started in 2019 but it’s much more highly developed and being facilitated now — it’s their job, the cartel’s job, the coyote’s job, is to get you to the border on the U.S. side, and then they give you the instructions on how to ask for asylum, and once you’re in, we’ll provide the last round of delivery, so to speak,” Biggs said.
Biden’s DHS, on his first day in office, suspended the Remain in Mexico policy, which former President Donald Trump implemented in January 2019. The policy allowed border officials to return asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await the processing of their claims there instead of being released into the U.S. with merely a promise that they would attend a later hearing.
Under Biden, illegal migration has skyrocketed as indicated by border officials apprehending about 170,000 illegal migrants in March, which broke a 15-year record, and shocking numbers of “got-aways” — exceeding 1,500 illegal migrants per day as reported by Breitbart News’s Randy Clark — who have made it past border officials and therefore entered the country entirely unscreened.
Breitbart News was in McAllen on Wednesday with a delegation of Republican House Judiciary Committee members, including Biggs, as they toured the busy Rio Grande Valley border sector, and met with Border Patrol agents, who could speak about the growing border crisis to the media in their capacity as members of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) union.
Chris Cabrera, NBPC vice president and spokesman, remarked to Breitbart News on how Border Patrol’s responsibilities shifted when Biden took office, saying the agents’ “manpower is being reallocated” as they are forced to process certain illegally arriving migrants, including thousands of families and unaccompanied alien children (UACs), for release into the U.S. interior. “Now we’re back to babysitting,” Cabrera said, expressing frustration at the Remain in Mexico policy essentially being replaced with a “catch and release” protocol.
Biggs described the federal government’s role when apprehended illegal migrants are released into the U.S. “Those people are … going to be delivered to an NGO [nongovernmental organization],” he said. “Within 24 to 48 hours, that individual will be delivered by the U.S. government or a U.S. government surrogate to the location they desire to be. So, we are the logistics operation, the U.S. federal government and the NGOs working in coordination to deliver these people to their endgame, and, in essence, they are viewed as a product by the cartel. We become the logistics team for the cartel.”
Cabrera explained illegal migrants in the Rio Grande Valley, who cross the border via the eponymous river, are often seeking to be apprehended.
“Now that [migrants] are turning themselves in, it’s even easier,” Cabrera said. “The smuggler doesn’t even have to get off the boat and sneak past us,” he said. “They just point up the road and say, ‘Hey, find a dude in a green shirt. You’re good to go.’ On top of that, now we’re taking the kid to your house for you. I mean, we’re like the other half of the smuggling organization. We’re completing the process,”
He concluded that smugglers are benefiting because they have less to risk because Biden’s policies have made the smugglers’ jobs easier. “We’re completing the process for them. We’re like, ‘Hey, you don’t worry about it, I’ll finish the job here. I got it from here.’”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com.
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