The recent tragic drowning in the Rio Grande of a young father from El Salvador, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and his two-year old daughter Angie, sparked recriminations across the political spectrum. Democrats pounced on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, while President Trump blamed House Democrats’ failure to pass legislation to fix the nation’s immigration laws. Apart from the Washington rhetoric, El Salvador’s president blamed something else: his own country’s economic and crime challenges.
While it is unlikely that the conditions El Salvador’s president describes would justify a migrant’s approval for asylum in the U.S., migrants keep coming. To obtain asylum, a migrant must establish a credible fear of persecution or harm on account of the migrant’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion. Migrants have not been deterred, however, from making the dangerous trek to America because they know that if you can get here, especially with a minor in tow, you will in short order be released into the country and have a couple of years before you see an immigration judge.
This reality has created a powerful magnet, not only for those facing economic hardship, but also for thugs eager to make a buck. And therein you find the culprits who deserve much blame. If you look closely enough, you can see in the crisis on our southern border the hand of the transnational criminal organizations/drug cartels that are responsible for untold murder and mayhem on both sides of the border.
For years, the cartels have grown in power and terror, pumping immeasurable amounts of heroin, fentanyl, and other poisons across the border and in return taking in tens of billions of dollars that feed their reign of carnage. They live off people’s misery and deliver misery in return. Like other transnational criminal organizations, they have not limited their moneymaking to one illicit activity but have expanded to others, including human trafficking and facilitating illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. Not only do the cartels now control substantial portions of Mexico, they have divided among themselves control of the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Most illegal immigrants crossing the border must first pay the cartel that controls the part of the border they are crossing. Tragically, while the cartels may profit from illegal passage, they do not guarantee safe arrival. All told, the cartels’ evil has brought shocking levels of death to both the United States and Mexico, whether from the more than 150,000 dying since 2005 from heroin and fentanyl overdoses north of the border or the 250,000 dying from sheer violence south of the border. The cartels have created a dangerous environment, and it is one in which they operate, entice and exploit vulnerable migrants. It is that environment through which Óscar and Angie made their journey.
During my visit to the border in 2017, I learned that it was routine to spot the cartels’ scouts in the hills as they feed intelligence to their networks to facilitate drug and human trafficking. It is also routine to spot cartel gunmen along the border. Author Daniel Horowitz reports that a border patrol agent told him that the cartel gunmen, knowing of the limited role our military plays on the border, actually cross the border in sight of US armed forces.
I often raised the cartel issue during my tenure in the House, and I challenged participants from Congress and the Mexican legislature on the subject during the US-Mexico Interparliamentary Group meeting in Mexico City in June 2017. With the present crisis on the border and the heartbreaking image of Óscar and Angie fresh in our memories, let this be the moment to set aside partisanship and turn the guns on our common enemy. I cannot think of a more powerful, paradigm-shifting goal than to galvanize a government-wide effort to crush the cartels. That goal opens up new possibilities for border security, immigration, and better relations with Mexico, including an update of the important Merida Initiative launched in 2008 to address corruption and violence in Mexico.
The question remains, however, whether that can be done in today’s political environment. The answer will reveal a lot about our current politicians’ motivations: Is it all about seizing power, or did they go to D.C. to solve a grave challenge? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
Keith Rothfus represented Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District between 2013 and 2019 and worked at the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration. He and his family live in Pennsylvania. He is on Twitter @KeithRothfus.
