The CCP Is Killing Americans and Laundering the Profits – With Our Help
Opioids are responsible for more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. By far, the biggest share of those deaths results from fentanyl, and our own border and immigration policies play an outsized role in facilitating the carnage. At the same time, the fentanyl trade is strengthening and enriching global criminal cartels and hostile regimes, most notably communist China.
Let’s start with the obvious. The majority of the lethal drugs that are responsible for more than 300 death every day in the U.S. cross the border from Mexico, trafficked by the same Mexican cartels that are responsible for moving unprecedented numbers of migrants to the U.S.
Massive illegal immigration is a problem in itself, but it also makes the movement of narcotics easier. While Border Patrol agents are tied up apprehending and processing migrants, they are not out along the border stopping shipments of fentanyl. While the Biden administration likes to argue that 92 percent of drug seizures occur at ports of entry, rather than between them, they can’t account for what they don’t know. They can’t know how much fentanyl (and other deadly narcotics) are not interdicted because the Border Patrol manpower is stretched thin by the administration’s border crisis.
They also can’t know how much fentanyl makes it through the ports of entry: Obviously a lot – otherwise the cartels wouldn’t risk running it past border inspectors. As the administration seeks to mask the scope of the illegal immigration crisis by moving more illegal aliens who use the CBP One phone app through ports of entry, there will be even less manpower available to catch drug smugglers who bring their wares right through the front door.
Less obvious is the fact that fentanyl does not originate in Mexico. The chemicals that are used to produce the drug originate in China, our biggest economic and geopolitical rival. Chinese criminal cartels are not silent partners in the global drug trade and continue to play an active role in the business even after the chemicals are shipped to Mexico and the end product hits the streets in the U.S.
Thomas Duesterberg, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, explains how the Chinese organized crime syndicates, known as triads, take advantage of the student visa process to infiltrate operatives in the U.S. There have been numerous documented instances of Chinese nationals, at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), engaging in espionage, stealing military and economic secrets. Duesterberg also details how some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese student visa holders play a role in an elaborate scheme to launder the huge profits the triads reap from the fentanyl trade.
“Physical dollars are collected from networks of street dealers and consolidated for pickup, often by Chinese students in the U.S., or from front businesses, such as restaurants. The dollars are delivered to money launderers, who then reimburse the Mexicans or other producers for the raw product… American investigators have identified hundreds of Chinese students in the U.S. who have deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in cash directly into U.S. banks.” he writes in the Wall Street Journal.
Of course, nothing happens in China without the acquiescence of the CCP. The profitable drug trade, facilitated in part by the Biden administration’s sabotage of border security and lax visa rules, has become part of the CCP’s effort to bolster its weakening economy. A real estate bust, sharp declines in exports (off 15 percent in the last year) and a youth unemployment rate of 20 percent are stirring discontent and have left the regime (and its grandiose plans) strapped for cash. “Beijing seems to tolerate the [money laundering] networks as a backhanded means of helping the triads, which aid other activities of the Chinese Communist Party, such as repressing dissent, and wealthy individuals who might otherwise be dissatisfied with [Xi Jinping’s] leadership,” Duesterberg continues.
Undoubtedly, we would be contending with drug traffickers, money launderers and totalitarian adversaries seeking to weaken us even if we had control of our borders and prudent visa-issuance policies. But there’s nothing that says we have to make it easy for them, which is exactly what the policies of this administration are doing. Deterring mass illegal immigration and asylum abuse – which we were doing reasonably well before the Biden administration came to office – would free up resources and manpower to go after global criminal syndicates that are killing Americans with fentanyl and other drugs.
The continued chaos at the border and lax issuance of visas to people who are answerable to hostile regimes would seem to indicate that unchecked immigration outweighs these other considerations.