Testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee this week, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that a chaotic, open border is leading to cartel control in the United States.
"Is it true that many of the foreign nationals who are being trafficked across our border often arrive here deeply indebted to the Mexican crime cartels?" Republican Congressman Tom McClintock asked. "Are those debts collected through indentured servitude to the cartels?"
"Certainly we have seen quite a number of such instances, absolutely," Wray said, adding the situation is extremely disturbing. "There is no question that the cartel activity on the other side of the border is spilling over in all sorts of ways."
FBI Director Christopher Wray: “no question” that "extremely concerning" Mexican cartel activity “is spilling over in all sorts of ways” into the United States because of Biden's border crisis pic.twitter.com/xjuCFQaNIs
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 10, 2021
According to local law enforcement dealing with the issue in different ways than Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs enforcement, human smuggling is now more lucrative for cartels than drug smuggling.
“We’re back to ground zero,” Pinal County Seargent Brian Messing told Townhall earlier this year. “They’ll switch back and forth between dope and humans based on price. The commodity is what they’re looking at. They don’t care if it’s a body or not, that’s their product. They’re getting $4000-$8000 per body so if they lose one or two in their journey to get them through in a faster period of time, they’re willing to let that life go. They don’t look at it like a human life they look at it like a commodity.”
