Like the Mexican Government, the Cartels Have a Vested Interest in Managing the Flow of Migrants

FAIR Take | November 2024

In the closing months before the U.S. elections, the number of encounters of illegal aliens entering the U.S. has declined significantly. This September, 144,666 such encounters were recorded, down from 370,883 in December 2023. Everything is relative, of course. The September 2024 figures were still huge by historical standards, and nearly five times greater than the number of encounters Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Secretary under President Obama, said would constitute a crisis.

As FAIR has reported, the Biden-Harris administration deserves very little credit for decline in border encounters since last December. Rather, the administration cut a deal with the government of Mexico to impede the flow of migrants heading north, as the elections approached. Overt action on the part of the Biden-Harris administration would have enraged the political base of President Biden and Vice President Harris, so, earlier this year, the administration essentially outsourced the job to the outgoing administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (who left office on Oct. 1).

Under the informal agreement, Mexico has increased security along its own southern border and has interdicted migrants approaching the U.S. border and returned them to southern Mexico, under a policy dubbed El Carrusel (the carousel). It is not clear what quid pro quo was offered to Mexico for its cooperation, but back in January, AMLO publicly issued a list of demands that included 10 million visas for Latino migrants, along with $20 billion in aid for Latin American and Caribbean nations.

But there are other extremely influential players in reducing the flow of illegal aliens to the U.S. border. Those players are the criminal cartels that, according to an Associated Press investigation, are really ones who “manage the flow of migrants” heading north. Through kidnapping and extortion, the cartels hold migrants hostage until they pay to be released. According to the director of a nonprofit providing humanitarian assistance, roughly one-third of the migrants that pass through its shelters are physically stamped with a marker indicating they’ve paid a ransom. “It’s [the cartel] that says who passes and who doesn’t,” Rev. Heyman Vázquez, a priest who works with migrants who cross the border between Guatemala and Mexico, told the AP. “The numbers of migrants that they take every day are big and they do it in front of the [Mexican] authorities.”

It is no secret that, under the Biden-Harris administration, business has been very good for the cartels. Wide open borders and catch-and-release policies have convinced migrants that there is a strong probability that coming to the United States illegally will pay off. As a result, record numbers of migrants have decided to take the trek, and if need be, pay money to the cartels. By the Department of Homeland Security’s own reckoning, upwards of 80 percent of them engage smugglers to get them into the U.S. because the journey itself is inherently dangerous, and because these criminal syndicates do not deal kindly with migrants who don’t pay for their services.

According to the Washington Post, “With revenue estimated at $4 billion to $12 billion a year, the smuggling of migrants has joined drugs and extortion as a top income stream for groups like Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, increasing their economic clout throughout the hemisphere.” In other words, the cartels have a vested interest in maintaining that sort of revenue flow. If keeping a lid on things in the months leading up to an election that will determine the sort of border and immigration policies the United States has for the next four years, they may see slowing the flow as a prudent business decision. From the perspective of the cartels, a U.S. administration that releases or paroles in the majority of migrants encountered at our borders, and issues them work authorization documents, is likely to provide them with a steady stream of customers for their services.

Of course, no U.S. administration should rely on foreign governments (although their assistance is certainly welcome) or criminal organizations to ensure the security of our borders. That is the sovereign responsibility of our own government, regardless of who is occupying the White House on January 20. The only headline the American public should be seeing over the next four years is one that informs them that our own policies have halted the flow of illegal migrants to our borders.