Tag Archives: drug trafficking

Another Consequence Of Our Open Southern Border

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On April 16th, The Center for Immigration Studies posted an article about the infiltration of the Mexican drug cartels into some American Indian reservations.

The article reports:

On April 10, I joined three tribal leaders at a hearing held by the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources to examine the threat to Indian Country communities posed by foreign drug cartels. Those leaders expressed alarm at how Mexican drug cartels have rapidly established a foothold on drug trafficking and other criminal activities in their communities, and they literally braved death threats to appear at the hearing.

Representatives of two tribes in Montana and one from Arizona implored Congress and federal agencies to prioritize the well-being of the citizens in Indian Country by securing the border and providing resources to help them eradicate the cartels. Said Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community: “It seems like [the feds] are more concerned about the immigrants coming across the border than concerned about what they’re doing here once they get here … and to me more importantly, the first people of this country they’re coming into.”

The Sinaloa cartel in particular has targeted several Indian reservations in northern Montana, including Blackfeet, Rocky Boy’s, Fort Belknap, and Fort Peck, for expansion of their drug-trafficking enterprise. They are attracted primarily by the opportunity of huge profit margins, as fentanyl pills can be sold for as much as $100, compared to three to five dollars in urban areas of the country. Other factors that work in the cartels’ favor are the remote geography, relative scarcity of law enforcement, and jurisdictional complications between tribal police and local and federal authorities.

According to tribal leaders, the cartel operatives can “blend in” to the native communities, and in some cases have “married in” to become embedded in the reservation community and to facilitate the recruitment of street-level dealers, who are often local people who become vulnerable to cartel control through addiction and substance abuse. The tribes have experienced a spike in sex trafficking, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and theft that they attribute to the burgeoning drug addiction problem fostered by the cartel. The week before the hearing, two residents of the Rocky Boy’s reservation were killed in what was described as a cartel hit.

Stiffarm stated that the Fort Belknap reservation police deal with cartel-related crime on a daily basis, but they generally have no jurisdiction over non-tribe members, and the cartels know it. Federal authorities, including Border Patrol, ICE, and the FBI are rarely present on these tribal lands. Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, lamented that “the feds don’t follow their own mandates” to enforce immigration and other federal laws, and that his tribe, which is located on the U.S. southern border, spends half of its law enforcement budget on border-related crime, including investigating everything from the deaths of crossers to stolen property.

A lot of our law-enforcement problems could be solved very quickly simply by closing the southern border to all but legal immigrants.

Spied On Again

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On Wednesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted the following headline:

Congress demands answers from White House over ‘invasive’ surveillance program known as Hemisphere that has tracked TRILLIONS of phone records for Americans each year – even if they are not suspected of a crime

Who authorized this surveillance?

The article reports:

Congress is demanding answers from the Biden administration about a secret spying program that tracks more than a trillion phone records from innocent and unsuspecting Americans each year.

The under-the-radar system, known as Data Analytical Services or ‘Hemisphere,’ has been in operation for over a decade. It allows federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to tap into the phone records of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of any crime.

Under the Hemisphere program the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) pays phone service provider AT&T to hand over phone records as far back as 1987.

The deal first came to light in 2013 after a bombshell New York Times report, but it has since been expanded.

The article notes that Congress is ready to investigate why the government is spying on innocent Americans.

The article reports:

Republican congressman Andy Biggs, Ariz., accused the government of spying on Americans.

Hemisphere is ‘invasive’ and allows ‘government agents warrantless access to trillions of Americans’ domestic communications records,’ he said.

Biggs went on: ‘The federal government doesn’t care about your privacy and it’s long past time we end these abuses and hold rogue actors accountable.

‘The Hemisphere Project highlights major loopholes in federal law through which the government is able to spy on Americans without judicial oversight, such as the purchase of personal data.’

Congress is currently considering renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702.

That allows for warrantless surveillance of foreigners but often catches the conversations of Americans.

Biggs said it must also look at the Hemisphere program.

The article concludes:

The program is run primarily by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Its stated purpose is to help investigate drug traffickers and other complex criminal enterprises.

However, it has also been used to arrest jewelry store robbers, a murder suspect and even a woman who was making nuisance bomb threats.

The program bypasses usual privacy regulations through a complex network of funding.

Rather than directly funding the surveillance, the ONDCP provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which in turn pays AT&T to operate the program.

Because of this Hemisphere is not subject to a federal Privacy Impact Assessment like most projects funded by federal agencies.

The program is obviously not successful in stemming the drug problem; why is it still in place?

Under The Radar

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On Wednesday The Epoch Times reported the following:

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr announced on Wednesday significant developments in the administration’s efforts to eradicate the notorious MS-13 gang, including its plan to seek the death penalty of an alleged gang member in connection to the slayings of two New York teens.

Trump said his administration’s “campaign to destroy MS-13” had lead to the arrest and indictment of dozens of MS-13 members and its leaders. The Justice Department launched Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV) in August 2019 in an effort to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately destroy the vicious gang, which has been responsible for a wide range of criminal activity across the United States such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, kidnapping, and murder.

Among the arrests include the indictment of Melgar Diaz, who became the first MS-13 member to be charged with terrorism-related offenses, officials say.

“He was responsible for activities in 13 states—20 cliques in the United States.  He was also the person who would greenlight assassinations in the United States.  The orders come from El Salvador—or they request to assassinate people who go down to El Salvador, and he would greenlight the hit,” Barr said during a press conference at the oval office on Wednesday.

Diaz, whose indictment was unsealed on July 14, was charged with offenses including conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill or maim individuals overseas, and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.

The article concludes:

The attorney general told reporters that more actions against the leadership of MS-13 are expected, saying that the administration had been working very closely with counterparts in El Salvador.

MS-13 was initially formed by Salvadoran immigrants that came to the United States in order to escape the civil war in their home country, according to a study published in the Journal of Gang Research in 2009.

This action is long overdue. Securing our borders is one way to keep members of MS-13 from coming into the country. Arresting the members that are already here is another step toward making America a safer place.

Did Making Marijuana Legal Solve Any Problems?

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Red State Observer posted an article today about the seizure of two tons of marijuana and $1 million in cash from an illegal growing operation in Southern California that was being run by an organization from China. Keep in mind that recreational marijuana use is legal in California, but the state has levied such high taxes on it that illegal growing and distributing operations are flourishing.

The article reports:

Nineteen people were jailed on suspicion of maintaining a drug house, theft of utilities, marijuana cultivation, marijuana sales and conspiracy, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said. Authorities served 23 search warrants that resulted in the arrests of residents of Hemet, San Jacinto, El Monte, Rialto, Rosemead, Arcadia and Calexico.

Search warrants also were served in Corona, Eastvale, South El Monte, West Covina and Lower Azusa.

Some 20,000 plants were eradicated and 100 pounds of processed marijuana was seized, a news release said. Deputies also confiscated equipment that can be used in growing operations, including 338 fans, packaging and 620 lights. Southern California Edison found an illegal electrical bypass underneath the electrical meters at 15 indoor grows, the release said.

Deputies froze 25 bank accounts containing an undisclosed amount of U.S. currency.

The searches culminated a four-month investigation into a drug trafficking organization. The San Jacinto Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Team, as it served previous warrants, determined that all the operations were being financed by the same group in the Los Angeles area.

The Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties sheriff’s departments, Hemet Police Department and Riverside County District Attorney’s Office assisted.

Legalizing marijuana may have theoretically brought the tax revenue to the state that they were seeking, but when the state continued to raise those taxes, the illegal marijuana industry began to reemerge. California needs to learn the lessons of the Laffer Curve.

That Was Then, This Is Now

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Amy Klobucher is the only candidate left in the Democrat primary who even seems to be a moderate. She’s not, but she is at least able to play the role well. However, there seems to be some distance between her current statements and her past statements.

Yesterday Breitbart posted a video of some remarks Amy Klobucher made in 2006.

The article reports what Ms. Klobucher said in 2006:

In 2006, while running for the U.S. Senate, Amy Klobuchar held the same positions on illegal immigration as President Donald Trump — supporting a physical barrier at the U.S.-Mexico border and mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens.

Unearthed footage of a 2006 U.S. Senate candidate debate at the University of St. Thomas reveals Klobuchar once held similar views on illegal immigration as Trump, policies she now avidly opposes as she runs for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination.

“I do believe that we need more resources at the border and that includes a fence,” Klobuchar said. “What we have now, we have people waiting to come in legally. Thousands of people waiting to come in legally to this country, and we have people coming in illegally. That’s not right. We need to get order at the border.”

Klobuchar went even further, touting her support for nationwide mandatory E-Verify to open jobs for Americans and prohibit businesses from hiring illegal aliens:

But we also have to stop giving amnesty to companies that are hiring illegal immigrants. Under this administration, the number of prosecutions of companies [hiring illegal immigrants] has gone way down. That has to change. [Emphasis added]

That is a totally rational statement about immigration. However, things have evidently changed for Ms. Klobucher.

The article reports:

Today, Klobuchar has dropped all support for physical barriers along the southern border to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking, vowing on her campaign website to rescind all border wall funding that Trump has secured in recent months and end the national emergency declaration at the border.

“Stop the diversion of funds needed to modernize our military bases from being used for the border wall,” Klobuchar touts, continuing that she “will rescind President Trump’s national emergency declaration and return funding for its intended purpose.”

On mandatory E-Verify, Klobuchar has said explicitly that she will not support such a policy unless it is coupled with an amnesty for the majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the U.S.

How can anyone look at the deaths in America caused by illegal drugs smuggled across the southern border and the murders committed by people who are here illegally and not want to control who enters America? An open border is not a plan for our success as a nation–it is an invitation for people who want to come here to take advantage of our rapidly breaking safety net–not who want to come here to help build our country.

 

This Will Continue As Long As There Is A Market For It

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The Washington Examiner is reporting today that U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 52 bales of cocaine near Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands last week. The street value of the cocaine is roughly $30 million.

The article reports:

CBP officials said Puerto Rico is becoming an attractive smuggling route this year for cocaine and heroin headed for the United States. In 2017, CBP seized nearly 66,000 pounds of drugs in and around Puerto Rico, more than any prior year on record.

“Drug trafficking organizations have always sought to use the Caribbean as a route to smuggle both narcotics and migrants. The logistics to do so are intrinsically more complicated than traversing the southwest border,” Jeffrey Quinones, a spokesman for CBP’s Puerto Rico and Virgin Island outposts, told the Washington Examiner. “Nonetheless, we have seen cyclical increases in the quantity of narcotics brought to these islands and a diversity of means to conceal and enter the product.”

This illustrates the need to have secure borders surrounding our nation. Obviously these drugs would not be smuggled in unless Americans were using them, but the fact remains that the flow of drugs needs to be stopped. At that point we will have a much better chance of helping those addicted.

Currently There Are More People Being Thrown Under The Bus Than Are On The Bus

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Politico is not a right-wing website. Generally, it leans left. So why are they throwing President Obama under the bus? I don’t know, but Politico posted an article yesterday detailing how the Obama Administration blocked an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States. This is part of the price President Obama was willing to pay to get the Iranian nuclear treaty.

The article at Politico is long, but it is worth reading. I will try to summarize the main points, but I strongly suggest that you follow the link above to read the entire story.

The article reports:

…Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The article quotes someone involved in the investigation as saying that the program was blocked from the top.

The article further reports:

Obama had entered office in 2009 promising to improve relations with Iran as part of a broader rapprochement with the Muslim world. On the campaign trail, he had asserted repeatedly that the Bush administration’s policy of pressuring Iran to stop its illicit nuclear program wasn’t working, and that he would reach out to Tehran to reduce tensions.

The man who would become Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director, John BrennanJohn BrennanObama’s White House counterterrorism adviser, who became CIA director in 2013., went further. He recommended in a policy paper that “the next president has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries” through not only a direct dialogue, but “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.”

Anyone who knows the history of Lebanon understands that Hezbollah is not a force for  peace, freedom, or stability.

The article goes on to detail money laundering by Hezbollah and  the fact that Hezbollah has operatives in America planning terrorist attacks. It is very obvious in reading the article that the activities of the Obama Administration put Americans at risk. The efforts at ending the drug trafficking and money laundering will resume under the Trump Administration. At a time when America has major drug problems, it would be a really good idea to shut down any traffickers we can.

How An Open Border Effects You If You Live In North Carolina

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Border security under former President Obama was something of a joke. Border patrol agents were simply not allowed to do their job. Certain areas of America were marked with signs indicating it was dangerous to go there because drug cartels were using those areas to conduct business (inside America). Well, there is a new sheriff in town, but he sure has a lot to clean up.

On February 7th, Judicial Watch posted an article about the reach of Mexican drug cartels into America. It’s not good news.

The article reports:

Illustrating that the Mexican drug crisis is having a far-reaching impact on the U.S., a heroin ring operated by a Mexican cartel was recently busted in an American suburb more than 1,500 miles from the southern border. In the last few years Judicial Watch has reported extensively on the massive amounts of drugs—especially heroin—that get smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican traffickers who later use street, prison and outlaw motorcycle gangs to distribute them throughout the country. Undoubtedly, these enterprises benefitted tremendously from the Obama administration’s open border policies.

Now we have confirmation that these illicit drug operations have penetrated areas far from the border. This case comes out of Rowan County, North Carolina where a local news report reveals that authorities began targeting large-scale heroin distribution in 2013. Last week three people with ties to a Mexican drug cartel were arrested in the county. Large quantities of heroin, handguns, a rifle, ammunition, numerous telephones, cash and drug paraphernalia was confiscated by police. Authorities say the Mexican heroin trafficking ring was based in the Charlotte-Matthews area and has been supplying heroin to Rowan County for more than a decade. “Over the past two months, investigators purchased large amounts of heroin from two people working for this Mexican National Drug Trafficking Organization,” the news report states.

Rowan County is near Charlotte, North Carolina.

The article further reports:

A big part of the problem is that the drug trafficking is being leveraged by corrupt public officials in the U.S., a years-long Judicial Watch investigation has found. Undoubtedly, cartel violence is real but truckloads of drugs are getting across the country because U.S. officials at the municipal, state and federal level are turning a blind eye or actively participating and cooperating with cartels. As part of an ongoing probe, Judicial Watch has provided the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley with evidence, including the sworn testimony of law enforcement officers, of this corruption and criminality in all levels of government. Learn more about Judicial Watch’s probe here.

Hopefully the new sheriff in town can put an end to this activity. However, when you realize how pervasive the corruption is, you begin to understand some of the opposition to President Trump. There is a lot of money tied up in the drug trade that does not want the new sheriff to interfere with that money. Our future as a nation is at stake–it is time to get control of our borders.