On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Josh Jones, a senior fellow in border security for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, joins Political Editor John Daniel Davidson to discuss the role smugglers, traffickers, and drug cartels play in profiting off of the surge of illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s loud and clear that unaccompanied minors that are coming to the U.S. are not being turned away,” Jones said, noting that people will pay to be escorted across the border and that cartels will take advantage of large groups and caravans as a way to smuggle drugs across the border.
“They can guarantee a 100 percent success rate, essentially, to folks who are wanting to send their children up into the US or who were coming into the US and sending for their children to come up,” he said.
Solutions for the growing influx of migrants, Jones said, lie in their home countries. We must also eliminate the open border messaging that President Joe Biden and his administration continue to peddle.
“If we’re talking about Mexico, the big issue there is corruption. The transnational criminal organizations, the cartels, are so powerful, and Mexico’s corrupt government protects them,” he said.
“When we’re talking about long-term solutions to immigration from Central America, you have to look at the living conditions in Central America and try to come up with ways … to provide security for families that live down there, to provide jobs resources down there,” Jones said. “Short term, it’s a messaging game. We need to send a clear message that the borders are not open, and we need to follow through on that.”
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