Elites’ ‘Compassion’ at the Border Leads to Enslavement and Death

April 20, 2023

By Brian Lonergan

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
— Ronald Reagan

The Great Communicator was probably channeling the frustration of American citizens in dealing with the federal government, but his statement could also apply to those trying to cross our southern border illegally. For all the lofty rhetoric from our political class and their allied remora fish-like immigration activists about helping migrants, their policies result in appalling levels of enslavement, sexual assault, and death.

By its geographic characteristics alone, our southern border has always been a hostile environment for humans to pass. By surrendering operational control of the border under the guise of extending opportunity to the less fortunate, the Biden Administration has taken the relatively stable border it received from its predecessor and turned it into a killing field.

In February, the Federal Register, the journal of the federal government, disclosed that 890 bodies of migrants were recovered by U.S. authorities along the border in 2022, a record number and a 58 percent increase over the previous year.

“It’s like a graveyard,” said Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County, Texas, which includes the heavily traveled crossing point of Eagle Pass. “I’ve been working the border for almost four decades and never saw tragedies of this magnitude.”

Off the coast of San Diego, eight migrants, later identified as Mexican nationals, died crossing the border when their two small fishing boats capsized. The dead included a teenager and a three-year-old girl.

These deaths are not the result of overly restrictive border enforcement policies, but the exact opposite. Since the time he was running for president in 2020, Joe Biden has been signaling the rest of the world to “surge the border.” He put the lure out there, and people from around the world responded. He didn’t tell them that his policies have made the border arguably more dangerous than it has ever been.

In addition to the deaths, there is an unfathomable amount of human suffering taking place as a result of Biden policies that have empowered the ruthless human trafficking cartels.   

One migrant reported that certain women who can’t afford the $5,000 fee of the La Linea cartel to cross the border take an alternative to work in U.S. strip clubs owned by the cartel. At least 1-in-10 dancers at border state clubs, the migrant claimed, are enslaved illegal aliens. 

The sexual assault of women and children at the border has become so common that videos are now surfacing of children displaying rape kits that appear to have been provided to them by groups that receive U.S. taxpayer money. The kits come with condoms, birth control, and rape whistles. 

During questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) showed the cruelty of this system by describing the colored wristbands the cartels make migrants wear as “modern-day leg irons,” and the victims as “children being sold into sex slavery.”

Rather than being outraged at this carnage, the illegal immigration lobby instead laments that it is not being done on a grander scale. We get the spectacle of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) play-acting trauma for the cameras at the chain-link fence of a detention facility parking lot while clad in designer clothes. Why is keeping migrants in a controlled environment with food, shelter, and medical care worse than the lawless war zone of the border that the policies Ocasio-Cortez supports have created?

The solutions to this humanitarian crisis are not to lure more migrants into the area and to demoralize the Border Patrol. The undeniable truth is that the border policies of the Trump Administration, despite the vociferous opposition they received, were far more pragmatic and effective. Empowering the Border Patrol, building the wall, and implementing the Remain in Mexico policy, to name a few initiatives, reduced the attraction of illegal migration and resulted in much less death and suffering.  

With the current administration, however, it is an open secret that they care little about the plight of migrants caught in the meat grinder at the border. They appear to be playing a sinister long game that is worsening the border crisis to enhance their own political fortunes. The deaths, rapes, and enslavement are just collateral damage they hope the public never learns of or simply forgets.

Citizens of the world seeking a better life by entering the United States illegally need to know that our government is here to help, and that should terrify them.

Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of illegal migration.

Also published at American Greatness, April 20, 2023.