Mexican Collapse Feeds Illegal Alien Problem In U.S.

Michael Cutler

This article on Fox News was brought to my attention by Bruce DeCell, a good friend who, given the circumstances under which we met, I would prefer that we had never met. Bruce is a founding member of 9/11 Families for a Secure America (9/11 FSA). He is a former New York City Police officer whose son-in-law was one of the many victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

I serve as an advisor to 9/11 FSA and we often discuss the clear nexus between our nation’s failures to secure its borders and create an immigration system that possesses meaningful integrity.

The Fox article actually deals with both of these critically important issues. The current situation in Mexico is the direct result of the ever-increasing influence that the drug cartels wield in that country. Corruption has historically been a way of life in Mexico. The current situation involves an exponential increase in the corruption, but adds to that problem the factor of escalating violence as drug cartels, not unlike terrorist organizations, use violence and the threat of violence in conjunction with bribery to destabilize the federal government of Mexico, along with local governments in that beleaguered country.



In order to wield this much power, the cartels needed to get their hands on huge sums of cash. The drug trade provided an infusion of billions of American dollars. The narcotics flowed (and continue to flow) north and the proceeds of the drug trade flowed south – into the bulging coffers of the cartels.

The cash bought many things, including weapons and vehicles (airplanes, boats, cars and trucks). That cash also bought counterfeit identity documents and safe houses and provided the means by which the cartels could set up shop here, expanding the tendrils of its reach clear across the United States.

This cash has the potential to corrupt government bureaucrats on the federal and local level in Mexico, thus enabling the criminals – and potentially terrorists – to buy authentic Mexican passports and other identity documents, in false names to disguise the identity of criminals and terrorists. It could also be used to similarly corrupt other officials of other Latin American countries to secure authentic identity documents in false names and nationalities.

Finally, that cash bought politicians, high ranking military officials and police officials. Those who could not be bought are killed. Many citizens of Mexico who bear no relationship to the drug trade are often caught up in the violence. They are, in the term the military often uses, “collateral damage.”

By failing to secure our nation’s borders, millions of illegal aliens have been able to enter the United States without leaving a trace of their arrival. Among the millions of illegal aliens whose primary goal is to get an illegal job are thousands of criminal aliens involved in gangs and the drug trade. Additional aliens are involved in other criminal enterprises. Not all of these aliens are citizens of Mexico or even Latin America. Many aliens come from other countries from other parts of the world. Additionally, there are a significant number of illegal aliens who are citizens of so-called “special interest” countries. These are the countries that are engaged in terrorism such as Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others.

It is also an established fact that there are terrorist training camps located in the Tri-Border Region of Brazil. By not securing our borders, our government has literally left the door open to all sorts of threats to the security of our nation and the safety of our citizens.

Yet there are still members of the United States Congress who are opposed to securing the border that must be secured to protect our nation and our citizens. There are those within the open borders crowd who profess to be advocates for “immigrant rights,” but who must know of the violence in Mexico and must be able to understand the clear nexus between the drug trade and the violence visited upon decent citizens of Mexico.

Yet these people steadfastly refuse to support any effort aimed at stopping the flow of drugs and illegal aliens. There is a clear nexus between trafficking in both commodities. Often illegal aliens are forced to carry drugs on their person as they are taken across the border by the smugglers (coyotes). Such aliens are referred to as “mules” because to the smuggler, they are nothing more than beasts of burden. They are used as mules would be to carry a load. Those illegal aliens are indeed treated no differently from any other load of contraband and, when they finally arrive in the United States their treatment is demeaning and dehumanizing. They do not come to share the “American dream” but rather to provide cheap and exploitable labor.

Now the violence is escalating exponentially. Kidnappings and home invasions are nearly a daily occurrence in cities in the United States that are located near the Mexican border. Phoenix, Arizona is one particularly hard-hit example of this trend.

Meanwhile, each and every day more and more members of the drug cartels and the various gangs enter the United States and have embedded themselves in communities clear across our country, not unlike a metastasizing malignant tumor. The concern is that with the increasing numbers of cartel members and their enforcers along with members of gangs such as MS-13, the tactics of terror that have driven increasing numbers of Mexican citizens to run the border that is supposed to separate Mexico from the United States may well be applied in increasing numbers of cities across the United States.

It is now estimated that there are now more violent gang members in the United States than there are sworn police officers.

The Fox article describes how there are increasing numbers of citizen of Mexico who now see in the United States not only an opportunity to make more money than would be possible in Mexico, but a safe haven to get away from the extreme violence that includes beheadings of police and military officials.

Interestingly, the article concludes:

Immigration lawyers say they don’t believe the U.S. will reach a point where it cannot afford to keep all of the asylum-seekers here, but they do agree that the immigration system will be heavily strained. Already, asylum officers are working with insufficient resources to process the number of applicants. According to a 2005 survey by the Immigration Policy Center, 93 percent of surveyed asylum officers said they routinely worked overtime, without pay, in order to avoid a backlog of cases. Some also said that they didn’t have enough time to thoroughly address each case, leading to the fear that they may have made wrong decisions in granting asylum.

It is clear that the beleaguered employees at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) lack the ability to keep pace with their ever increasing workload. I have often invoked the analogy of the episode of I Love Lucy wherein Lucy and her hapless cohort, Ethel, take jobs at a candy factory. They are supposed to wrap pieces of candy that are delivered to them on a conveyor belt that keeps moving faster and faster until they are unable to keep pace with the candy that hurtles at them at warp speed. They try eating the candy and stuffing the candy down their clothes to keep up, but to no avail.

In that analogy, I left an important factor out. Imagine if a small but unknown percentage of the candy contained a deadly poison. Imagine if Lucy and Ethel were told that in addition to wrapping the candy they needed to attempt to find the poisoned morsels.

That is the untenable situation that the adjudications officers at USCIS find themselves in each and every day. Consider the case of Mir Amil Kansi, a citizen of Pakistan who applied for political asylum and then showed his appreciation by standing outside the CIA in January 1993 one morning with an AK-47. He opened fire on the employees of our government’s intelligence agency and when the smoke cleared, two officials were dead and three others were wounded. In the ensuing investigation it was determined that he had lied on his application for political asylum. He was ultimately tracked down and returned to the United States to stand trial for his murderous rampage.

Kansi is only one of many aliens who easily gamed the immigration system in order to embed themselves in our country in preparation for their nefarious activities. The attack on the World Trade Center the month after Kansi attacked the CIA also involved aliens who easily gamed the immigration system. The terrorists of the 9/11 attacks had also been able to manipulate the immigration system to their advantage. In all, it was determined that of 94 terrorists who had been identified as operating in the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of September 11, 2001, 59 had used immigration fraud to either enter the United States and / or embed themselves in the United States.

The issue of the utter lack of integrity to the immigration benefits program has yet to be addressed. There are still politicians who talk about Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) but precious few seem to give a damn that criminals and terrorists are easily able to game that bureaucracy that literally puts the keys to America’s front door into the hands of those who would kill us – if and when they have the opportunity.

Additionally, each and every day our border still permits the entry of thousands of illegal aliens who enter surreptitiously. Every single day, narcotics flow north and money – American money -flows south buying guns, vehicles, corruption and death.

The other day a reporter noted that the approval rating for Congress had soared. She said that, if I recall correctly, the approval rating was an incredible 31%.

That nearly took my breath away! Could you imagine keeping your job if your employer told you that out of 100% you had a 31% approval rating?

In less than two years each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection. In less than two years more than one third of the members of the United States Senate will have to face their constituents. They need to be reminded that they work for us, We the People!

The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do – we must stop sitting on the sidelines.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice.

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