Mexican cartels amassed fortunes on par with major corporations, but that has all changed since President Donald Trump closed the border.
Under the Biden administration, the Mexican cartels’ profits jumped from $500 million in 2018 to an estimated $13 billion in 2022, according to The New York Times. The massive flow of cash was largely due to their migrant smuggling enterprise, which grew even more profitable than their vast drug empire.
Border Patrol agents were instructed to release illegal crossers into the United States as swiftly as possible under then-President Joe Biden, and many likened what the job had become to aiding in the smugglers’ enterprise.
But now that’s all changed since Trump’s return to office. For the last six months, the Trump administration hasn’t released a single illegal border crosser into the country, putting an end to the major catch and release pipeline and driving migrant encounters to record lows.
Smugglers, however, have grown desperate to maintain their profits, shifting operations to the high seas to move people illegally into the U.S.
Along the California coast, the pace of interdictions of boats packed with illegal immigrants has remained constant.
Last fiscal year, the Coast Guard encountered “well over” 2,000 illegal immigrants. And traffic has remained “fairly steady” with the Coast Guard seeing an increase in interdictions, Coast Guard Capt. Jason Hagen, who is the southwest district chief of enforcement, told The Daily Wire in a recent interview.
“As you lock down the land border, the cartels will need to make their money, so they push to the maritime, to the water side. And, unfortunately, there is no border wall in the ocean; we’re challenged with the tyranny of distance,” Hagen said.
Earlier this month, Coast Guardsmen in San Diego’s Mission Bay were forced to fire several rounds to disable the engine of a 20-foot smuggling boat carrying 12 illegal immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador as they tried to escape.
Credit: Customs and Border Protection
Days later, Navy sailors came across a small boat packed with 17 illegal migrants traversing the sea near San Clemente Island. Border Patrol took them into custody, as is standard procedure.
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At least four illegal migrants died after their boat recently capsized off Imperial Beach in a separate incident. The Justice Department has since hit a Mexican man believed to be the captain with charges of “Bringing in Aliens Resulting in Death and Bringing in Aliens for Financial Gain” that could result in life in prison, according to the Justice Department.
“It’s a dangerous game, and I can tell you the cartels are not in the business of safety, they’re in the business of money,” Hagen said.
The cartels have also increased their maritime smuggling fees.
Under the Biden administration, they were charging illegal immigrants between $10,000 – $15,000 in smuggling fees to take to the seas. Now, they’re forcing migrants to pay between $20,000 – $40,000, Manny Bayon, the President of the Border Patrol union’s San Diego chapter, told The Daily Wire.
Bayon echoed that maritime smuggling in the Pacific Ocean has picked up “due to the increased enforcement on the southern border.”
In response, federal authorities are now preparing to bolster security along the coastal border by installing new thermal imaging cameras to spot smuggling activity before it reaches America’s shores, according to the Los Angeles Times.
