How secure is our southern border?
In May of 2023, we jumped at the chance when asked if we wanted to go to the US/Mexico border to see what was happening down there.
As a law enforcement officer in the Midwest, I have seen an uptick in the amount of fentanyl being seized and overdoses associated with the drug. All indicators indicate fentanyl being manufactured in China and transported to the USA via our southern border. Fentanyl is also being cut into other drugs to increase the hit; long gone are the days of using baby formula to cut dope, and now it is a deadly poison.
One side of our media will tell you the border is secure. The other side will say the border is wide open and an invasion is happening. Nowadays, the only way to know what is really going on is to experience it yourself. If you are like me, you take everything a politician says with a fistful of salt, so finding out for myself was the only option.
My business partner, Aubrey, and I were invited to Eagle Pass, Texas, to visit a stretch of the Rio Grande rife with illegal crossing hotspots. The ironic part for me was there are road bridges crossing the Rio from the US into Mexico. Daily, hundreds, if not thousands, of people travel legally over these bridges to work. Then, right under the same bridges, hundreds of illegal crossings happen. It is still big business for the cartels to move people across the river, even standing on the Mexican side with rifles in hand to encourage people to keep going, despite warnings from the US side to stop. But, once someone has gone over the halfway point, they are officially on US soil, which changes the dynamic. I'm sure the cartels laugh their heads off watching the circus show unfold.
On the US side of the Rio, there are ten-foot fences topped with barbed wire. Just before we arrived, the National Guard was stringing razor wire closer to the bank. Needless to say, these measures are about as practical as a chocolate fire blanket.
On our first visit down to the river, we hit the jackpot. There were new arrivals on the US side of the high fence. Being a well-traveled international man of mystery myself, I guessed they were from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. I was wrong. The local Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer told me they had traveled from Syria. Having spent over three years in Afghanistan, time in Iraq, and crossing swords with Somali pirates for over a year, the idea of eight fighting-age males from Syria entering our country worried me a little. Even more so when I was told they all got $1000, a new cell phone, and a notice to appear in court in 2036!
Next, we went for a walk along the river. Here, you can find various discarded personal items such as passports, driver's licenses and identification cards, clothes, toys, personal hygiene products, and cash. In the short time we were at the river, we found identification for people from Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico; it was everywhere.
Later in the day, we chatted with more DPS officials who said they had encountered approximately 200 people crossing the river under one of the road bridges. The white DPS buses were there, just waiting to ferry the crossers away from the scene. We managed to get close to the riverbank but were quickly ushered back to the media area, which is when we realized why there was no media. The media section was two hundred yards from the riverbank, and their field of view was blocked by DPS, CBP, and National Guard vehicles, as well as the sizeable concrete support beams holding up the bridge. Even Fox News had stopped going to Eagle Pass.
As we prepared to wrap up our visit, four more white DPS buses came on site. We asked the DPS supervisor what was going on. He told us a phone call had come in from way up high telling them to "cut the wire and let them all in." It doesn't happen often, but I was lost for words.
Our border is secure in places but wide open in others. The secure locations are used daily by law-abiding citizens from both sides of the border, which means the wide open sections are used to smuggle people and illegal drugs into the US. CBP, DPS, and the National Guard have their hands full with legal crossings and the catch-and-release type crossings we witnessed. This is by design; that is the way the cartels want it. If our law enforcement officials have their hands full, they will not find the child sex traffickers or the thousands of pounds of Fentanyl and Meth crossing over daily.
I wondered if, when writing this post, I would arrive at a politically charged conclusion, but I did not. As a law enforcement officer, a veteran, the owner of a security company, and a patriot, I arrived at a security/safety conclusion. Regardless of where you stand politically, where you get your news, or if you have your head in the sand, what's happening at our southern border is affecting all of us. It's not Invasion USA (hat tip to Chuck Norris) nor a trickle of refugees. It is a coordinated operation from the Mexican side and a lackluster operation on the US side. Why is it this way on our side? Is it because the US government has a huge heart and wants to help everyone? Is it replacement theory? I cannot say. What I can testify to is this, what is happening down at the border is a fuster cluck. The leaders of CBP, DPS, and the National Guard do not communicate with each other, so they all have different mission objectives. This is a considerable detriment to the safety and security of the USA and the citizens who live here.
If you want to know what is happening in the world, go find out. Mainstream media cannot be trusted to report the truth, and they never will be as long as they are politically motivated. And if you get the opportunity to visit the border, do it.