Democrats, who have long advocated for open borders, have a lot of explaining to do on this one.

According to Breitbart News:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Joint Task Force-West (JTF-W) Director Manuel Padilla, Jr. told Breitbart News about a pregnant migrant woman who cartel smugglers beat because she did not pay to cross the border.

...and...

“This young lady was eight months pregnant,” the director continued. “When the agents encountered her, she was beaten up so bad by the cartels, or by criminal organized crime, because she had not paid those dues.” Padilla said agents took the young woman directly to the hospital where she delivered a stillborn child. He said the baby died because of the beating. She also required dialysis in the aftermath.

Is that enough to appall anyone?

Who did the beating? None other than the biggest advocate (and beneficiary) of the U.S. doing nothing to enforce its borders, the filthy Mexican drug cartels. Because unlike Democrats, and the loudmouthed U.S. clergy, and every lobbyist with their snoot in the till, Mexican cartels know very well that there is no such thing as open borders. You either have the U.S. control its borders (which is what leftists scream about)... or cartels will do it for them. There's no either/or. You get one or the other. If Democrats, god forbid, enacted a full blown open borders law, the cartels would be there to collect the crossing fees. Because let's face it, crossing the Mexican border to the U.S. is something of value and cartels know it.

Someone is always going to control the border. And pity any migrant who doesn't pay them.

This, incidentally, is one reason why the cartels have grown so big and grand and powerful in Mexico these days. I wrote about just how bad it's gotten the other day here. "Enforcing" the border, and collecting every border crossing fee, as they do, ensures lots and lots of money to pay for recruitment and buy guns, which is why even the safest parts of Mexico are enduring a plague upon them.

But now we have Democrats, who encourage zero-enforcement at the U.S. border, and also encourage illegal border crossing, effectively ceding control of the U.S. borders to Mexican cartels. To the extent that that happens, what rushes into the void is the sick dynamic of cartel enforcement, on even pregnant women who, in the cartel minds, are doing it "illegally" by cartel law.

Do we have a bishop to step forward to claim responsibility for that chain of events? Do we have a Democrat? Where's Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on that one?

To the extent that Democrats encourage open borders and demonize the Border Patrol, which after all, saved what was left of the cartel-beaten woman, we have Democrat responsibility. They are to blame.

And blame themselves they never willl. But they are to blame.

Image credit: Carlos Adampol Galindo, va Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0