Border Patrol agents anticipate cartels will use blue wave to lure migrants to US

Mexican cartels that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations are likely to use Democrats‘ widespread wins in the midterm elections as a way to lure migrants into paying to get into the United States, according to federal law enforcement.The blue wave seen across Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state races nationwide Tuesday gives cartels, who are in the billion-dollar business of smuggling people and goods, new tools to hook unknowing migrants who believe the U.S.-Mexico border may be more “open” to an extent than it has been since President Donald Trump took office.“The cartel is a business and they want to make money so they’re going to use whatever they can to lie, cheat, and steal from the immigrants,” a senior Border Patrol official in Texas told the Washington Examiner in a text message. “I wouldn’t put it past them or I wouldn’t doubt that they would be messaging that to recruit more numbers.” A second senior Border Patrol official in Texas said intelligence reports reviewed this week showed that at least one cartel was planning how to use the election’s outcome to its benefit.“The message is already being sent. ‘The borders will be opened again,'” the second official wrote in a text message.Two other Border Patrol agents in Texas agreed that Democrats’ many wins on Tuesday, including in Texas, were something that the cartels would likely use in their marketing.One stunning blow to Republicans that the cartel can message on is the defeat of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), whose state legislature spent $11 billion shoring up security at the southern border over the past five years.Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa (D-TX) campaigned on walking back a slew of Abbott’s border and immigration measures, talking points that the cartels can cite or even misrepresent in an effort to persuade migrants that the U.S.-Mexico border is no longer closed to migrants.The cartels, like any legal or illegal business, have pivoted countless times to stay operational in any climate. For example, in Trump’s first few months in office in 2017, the Border Patrol arrests quickly dropped off for several months, but then rose again sharply as cartels realized the U.S. had not changed any policies and the cartels’ methods would prevail at the border.As the Trump administration began to install border wall in various parts of the 1,950-mile southern border in 2020, Border Patrol saw the cartels increasingly pivot to the sea and tunneling underground to move people and drugs into the U.S.Agents, using jet skis and boats to patrol the 20-mile stretch from Chula Vista, California, at the border up past downtown San Diego, made 302 interdictions in fiscal 2020, which ran from Oct. 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, 2020, compared to 195 the previous year and 88 in 2015, according to federal data. One such incident resulted in the seizure of a small boat that was loaded with more than 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine.“Over the past year, within 2020, we’ve had a record number of marine interdictions, including pangas [small, fast boats], jet skis, swimmers, and paddle boaters,” then-Border Patrol San Diego Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke told the Washington Examiner during a land and sea tour. “The wall structure itself is solidifying the land border, and it’s forcing the smugglers to come out into the maritime environment.”Officials at the departments of Homeland Security and War admitted at a policy discussion in Phoenix in May that they were concerned about the security of the nation’s skies along the land border and have admitted that the airspace is incredibly easy to penetrate from Canada and Mexico.Recent and continuing major improvements in infrastructure at the U.S.-Mexico border have already begun to push terrorist organizations and cartels into the air to get around ground infrastructure, such as walls, river barriers, and sensors, as they smuggle money and guns into Mexico and drugs into the U.S., according to government officials leading efforts to counter unfriendly drones.ABBOTT SPENT YEARS FORTIFYING THE TEXAS BORDER. HINOJOSA COULD UNDO IT ALLAdam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the liberal immigrant advocacy organization the Washington Office for Latin America, said he did not see any reason that cartels would pivot given that the Trump administration will remain in office for two more years and oversees security at the border, not state governors.Isacson also said that unlike after the pandemic, when millions of migrants were seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere, the people attempting to enter the U.S. in Trump’s second term are focused on evading arrest and determined to enter regardless of who is in office.