I have read the accounts and so have many of you. A young mother from Honduras, two young sisters from Guatemala, a 6-year-old child from El Salvador--they were all told by a local cartel that, for a price, a better life awaits them in America. They are told, as evidenced by those chanting ``Biden, Biden'' at the border, that this new President has opened the borders and that amnesty is imminent, so get in while you can. These vulnerable people are flocking to smugglers and violent criminals and paying them all that they have for their chance to get in while they can. In the last month, traffickers have allegedly made as much as $14 million a week smuggling men, women, and children across the border. Once indebted to cartels and coyotes, the price these vulnerable people pay is far more costly than money. According to media reports, men are used as slaves; women are raped endlessly. In fact, one-third of the women making their way to the border are reportedly sexually assaulted, and 68 percent of the people coming across the border are physically assaulted. Children are rented, trafficked, and ``recycled,'' as they put it, forced to pose as the child of one illegal immigrant after another to activate the so-called Flores get-out-of-jail-free card. One former Border Patrol agent told me that the smugglers prefer to use babies because they are unable to tell Border Patrol agents that these are not, in fact, their parents.…
On the recordMarch 24, 2021
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