Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the committee that oversees homeland security, has just returned from a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border where he didn’t like what he saw.

A human crisis? Not really, said the Republican Wisconsin senator. “There is no humanitarian crisis,” he said.

U.S. Border Patrol chaos? No again. “We’ve learned, and have become pretty efficient, it’s still overwhelming, but we’re pretty darn efficient,” he said, complimenting officers that deal with thousands of illegal immigrants weekly.

In fact, on the U.S. side of the border, he said, “nothing really shocked me.”

It’s across the Rio Grande in Mexico that has his attention. That, he said, is where control of the border lies.

“We do have control of the border, on the Mexican side. It’s completely controlled by the drug cartels, the human trafficking cartels, the Mexican police, everybody gets their cut. Nobody, nobody comes into America without paying the fee,” he told Secrets.

Cartels are pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars ushering immigrants through Mexico. America’s broken immigration system—our laws and legal loopholes—sustains this wicked business model. Our laws must change. https://t.co/kUMLVtQOAj — Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) April 26, 2019

Worse, he added, the Mexicans have figured out U.S. legal loopholes in immigration law to turn border officials into their helpers. “They are almost subcontracting that out for free,” said the two-term chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Johnson has been front and center in the debate over U.S. immigration policy, holding several recent hearings that have helped to change the pro-immigration view of his Senate Democratic colleagues. “I’ve seen a sea change” in the Democratic attitude, he said.

His new efforts on the issue came after he returned from a visit to the El Paso, Texas, border station where he saw how both sides have turned the illegal immigration crisis into an assembly line process. And he wants to end that.

“What I’ve been trying to convey, because I think the American people don’t fully understand this, is how effectively the human traffickers, some of the most evil people on the planet, how they are making hundreds of millions of dollars on this, how effectively they are exploiting our laws, using Border Patrol and ICE as part of the process in their conduit,” said Johnson, who approaches the issue with his matter-of-fact businessman’s style.

Johnson is hopeful of granting border officials more authority to make faster judgments on asylum claims so that undocumented immigrants aren’t released into the country — rarely returning for deportation hearings.

“The solution,” he said “is removal.” He said that if enough immigrants, some who pay $10,000 each, are sent home, fewer will try to get in.

That, he added, is more effective than a wall. “Not a wall, unfortunately that was not helpful, was too easily ridiculed and, by the way, is not the solution. It doesn't fix this problem,” he said.

The reason, he explained, is that the cartels are using loose immigration and asylum laws to send undocumented immigrants to the “front of the line” right through border gates.

“They don’t have to walk very far. The human traffickers, at least they are nice this way, they transport them up to right across the Border Patrol station in El Paso,” he said. “When the Border Patrol picks them up, no questions asked. They may just out of curiosity. But they immediately go through processing. Again, the system is so overwhelming that they are just moving people through,” he added.

His goal is to shift the debate’s political and media focus on walls and caged children to the sinister cartels and ways to help border officials act with authority to end the trafficking.

“We need to change the narrative in the press,” he said. “We need to change that narrative to the evil people, the true evil people in this equation, which are the human traffickers, and let’s paint the picture that we’re the chumps that are helping these human traffickers put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pocket because we’re too stupid to change the law and actually enforce what we should be enforcing so this doesn’t happen,” he added.

