Ex-Border Patrol Chief: Cartels Exploiting Migrants for Drug Smuggling

Rodney Scott, former U.S. Border Patrol Chief, says drug cartels benefit from the nation’s and law enforcement’s attention being diverted by the unprecedented number of illegal migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Scott said in an interview on March 28 that the people crossing the border provide the cartels with a convenient cover for their other operations.

Scott stated the cartel employs people to reshape the border, wholly overwhelming local law enforcement on a systematic level. People that are willing to pay more money not to meet a border patrol agent, or the narcotics, the fentanyl that’s poured into cities all across this country. Those are the threats that illegal immigration is a cover or a mask for.

Scott also mentioned recent events where groups of people were discovered imprisoned inside railcars, resulting in hospitalizations and fatalities, as examples of the tremendous cost migrants pay to serve as the cartels’ shields.

On March 27, at least 39 people were killed and many more injured in a fire that broke out in a Mexican immigration detention facility.

Scott added that the deaths related to illegal migration and the cartels’ control of the southwest border get considerably more attention when the numbers are high but occur regularly.

The ex-Border Patrol chief stated that any loss of life is tragic, but the horrible thing is this is preventable. Not every death, but many of them are preventable if law and order at the border were reestablished and eliminated the chaos created by the Biden administration.

Having worked in both the Trump and Biden administrations, Scott said that the former Vice President’s decision to reinstate the Obama-era catch-and-release policy of letting illegal migrants into the United States awaiting their court date had effectively marketed itself to people who wanted to avoid going through the proper channels to gain lawful entry.

They take that as a victory, he added, and as long as there is no explicit punishment for crossing the border illegally, people will continue to flood in.

Scott said deadly drugs like fentanyl are also pouring across the border, thanks to a partnership the Mexican cartels have entered with China.

He explained that China’s persistent cooperation with the cartels, including the shipment of precursor chemicals into Mexico, is the greatest threat to public safety. Mexico’s cartels produce fentanyl because of its enormous profit potential and low commodity cost.

According to DEA agents, the Sinaloa and Jalisco gangs in Mexico generate the bulk of the fentanyl that enters the United States and almost exclusively source the chemicals they need from China.

It is widely maintained that China’s principal gain from this partnership is the opportunity to poison Americans with fentanyl, and all signs point to this goal being achieved.

More than 70,000 people in the United States died of fentanyl toxicity in 2021, making it the most significant cause of mortality for adults aged 18 to 45, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scott emphasized, however, that the Mexican drug cartels continue to pose the greatest threat to illicit fentanyl since they produce the drug in enormous quantities and have become the de facto government in significant parts of Mexico.

He said the cartels would continue to benefit until the United States does something about it. The constant influx of illegal migrants has left Border Patrol completely overburdened.

Scott claimed that nobody knows what is entering the country. Yet fentanyl is readily available in America’s urban centers, killing more people than the wars and 9/11 combined.

Scott concluded that it’s a national security threat that must be addressed.