Republicans Work With Cartels to Sustain The Border Crisis

Just trying to help out as always.

Donald Trump according to all news reports, has such a grip on the Republican Party now that just one phone call from him can squash legislation or trigger a phony, time-wasting investigation to create a false equivalency between his actual crime family and the fabricated “Biden Crime Family.”[1] That the vast majority of Republican officials of course, especially those in Congress, will cooperate with him in whatever scheme he comes up with now, goes without saying.

His latest one is subverting a bi-partisan immigration/Ukraine war deal to both please his ally Vladimir Putin and give himself an issue to demagogue Democrats to death with during an election year. Joe Biden’s proposal for a $110 billion dollar package that would fund Ukraine, Israel and even more border security ($14 billion more for US contractors to larder their pockets with), is dead within a week of optimism. By January 24, Mitch McConnell was signaling that “the nominee” (Trump) wants to run on immigration, and “we don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”

Of course you don’t, because you Republicans were never sincere about securing the southern border in the first place. Your donor class overlords loved all that cheap labor, and it’s long been a club you can beat up Democrats with like a baby seal. Ever since Trump turned the southern border into a controversy in 2015 (when southwest border apprehensions were but 25% of what they were in 2000), you’ve done nothing but obstruct efforts to fix it. Even when you had two years controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress, you passed no meaningful legislation except a huge tax giveaway to your billionaires. “You all just got a lot richer,” he told his Mar-a-Lago members two hours after he signed it.[2]

Worse yet, Republicans may now be on the offensive to make the situation all the worse, doing everything in their power to convince the world that “Joe Biden has an open border policy.” In a normal democracy, such would be seen for what it is—not a legitimate disagreement over policy and procedure, but subversion and treason. In other words, insurrection by other means.

A Coordinated Psy Ops

While there’s no denying that the surge of people from the southern Americas is at ridiculous levels and needs to stop, how much effort is being given to finding out why they are coming in such droves?

When Sixty Minutes interviewed Alejandro Mayorkas,[3] Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary about why they were getting such a crush of people at the southern border lately, his answer was deadly accurate, but hardly the conventional wisdom—“Smuggling organizations [cartels and their coyotes] engage in mis and disinformation.” And indeed they do. In fact, they can show their marks, their victims, quotes right on their phones from US officials declaring that America has an open border policy.

But which officials could we be talking about here? Radio show host Thom Hartmann did a deep dive back after the 2022 mid-terms to find out who was broadcasting to the world that the United States had “an open border policy.” He found out that the Washington Examiner, a right-wing paper, tried to do an expose of Democratic politicians advertising an open border, and could not find even one!

Thom couldn’t either, but on the contrary, he did find these quotes from Republicans:

— Ted Cruz wants everybody south of our border to know that the “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision”;
— Rick Scott wants everybody to know that “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”;
— Marco Rubio says there’s “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Rand Paul is so extreme he tells us Senator Rubio “is the one for an open border”;
— Josh Hawley says “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis”;
— Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open” [no less];
— Ron Johnson wants the world to know that “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”;
— Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”;
— Mo Brooks opposes “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans”;
— Lauren Boebert says the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House”;
— Matt Gaetz “revealed a complex and deceitful agenda by Joe Biden’s Democrat administration to evade our Southern Border law enforcement”;
— Gym Jordan says “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment”;
— Kevin McCarthy says the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border”;
— Elise Stefanik proclaims “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.”
— Tom Cole’s website features “Biden’s Open Border America”;  
— Bob Goode brags about introducing legislation named the “Close Biden’s Open Border Act”;
— John Rose “Calls Out Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Paul Gosar claims Biden is “Destroying America with His Open Border Policies”;
— Roger Williams complains about the “Democrats’ Open Border Problem”;
— Tom Cole wants the world to know that Biden’s “open border policies have given the green light to migrants and bad actors from around the world…”;
— Gus Bilirakis “Denounces Dangerous Open Border Policies on the House Floor”;

With just a little bit of investigation of my own, I found:

• Tucker Carlson: “Biden’s open-border policy is reckless and dangerous.”
• House GOP article, Nov. 2022: “Biden’s Open Border Policies Have Deadly Consequences.”
• Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas: “Abbott went on to say cities and counties expect the Biden administration to fix the “open-border problem that they caused.“[4]
• [Abbott] spokesperson Renae Eze: “President Biden made his intentions clear when he said on the Democrat presidential debate stage that his administration would have open borders.” [He did not.[5]]
• Senator J.D. Vance: “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Detecting a pattern here? Such loyal Americans, this bunch.

The Reality

“In fact I had a popular commentator, four weeks ago that I talked to that told me flat out, before they knew any of the contents of the bill, nothing was out at that point, who told me flat out, ‘If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this Presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you.”‘

-Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, author of a comprehensive border bill that was like a wishlist of right-wing goals they had been seeking for years, that Joe Biden and the Democrats said they would sign off on.

Nice people these Republicans. Border policy during the Trump years was so extreme that Biden’s attempt to bring them back to normal levels of craven dysfunctionality that it’s been like, since, forever, may sound like “open borders” to the gullible consumers of daily right-wing propaganda. But the reality is much different.

Here are some quotes from people who study this issue for a living:

• “Rebecca Hamlin, who studies immigration politics as a professor with the University of Massachusetts Amherst and wrote a book on the labeling of migrants, told Newsweek that the political usage of the term “open border” does not reflect reality, saying the Biden administration’s policies are relatively restrictive compared to past presidential administrations.
• “I’ve been studying immigration politics for now 20 years, and I haven’t seen such a mismatch between the accusations of one party and the policies of the other which are actually not close to open and probably stricter than what we’ve seen in a long time,” Hamlin said.[6] [Emphasis added].
• Libertarian think tank Cato Institute [no less], has taken note of this, publishing a September article titled Biden’s Border Policy Is Not ‘Open Borders,’ where it noted that “Biden’s policies and goals are largely the same as those of President Donald Trump.”[7]

• From March 2020 to February 2022, 1.7 million expulsions have been carried out under Title 42, with 1.2 million of them occurring under the Biden administration, according to a Migration Policy Institute report on government data.[8] [Title 42 was deployed by the Trump administration to refuse immigrants at the border during the pandemic. March, 2020 to February 2022 is roughly two years, with each administration in charge of about half that time. In other words, Trump turned back half a million at that time, while Biden 1.2 million, and is still using that executive order to this day since there’s no legislation forth coming to act on.]

• “…Donald Trump had moved the bar very, very far,” [CFR immigrations expert Edward] Alden said. “And so now the Biden administration gradually returning border management to that more normal situation is decried by conservatives as an open-borders policy. Because the Trump administration was prepared to go so far in closing down the borders, any move from that in comparison looks like an ‘open-borders’ policy.”[9]

In contrast, nothing speaks quite like actual facts and context. Hordes of people slipping into the US from the south hit a peak around the year 2000, and have been way down ever since. As I posted in “Donald Trump’s New Iron Curtain” a few years back, an article worth reading (including some personal experience of my own when first arriving in Los Angeles in 2006), here are some charts on illegal immigration from the US government:

Tough Guy-ism—The Trumpian Answer To Everything

When Joe Biden took over, his new administration was reeling from the chaos created by the attempted Insurrection, and the utter lack of cooperation they received from Trump’s non-existent Presidential Transition team, required by law.[10] In border policy his aim was to rehabilitate America’s tattered image as a nation that could tear kids from the arms of asylum-seeking parents, some to never be reunited again.

The Atlantic magazine published the longest article in their history in 2022 called, “‘We Need To Take Away Children,’” a quote from one of Trump’s officials. Based on a year and a half-long investigation into Trump-era border policy, it’s a gripping story of how a handful of “immigration hawks” led by Stephen Miller, immediately began experimenting with ways to implement a “Zero Tolerance” border crossing policy. It featured the heretofore unheard-of practice of arresting and criminally charging parents for the right to apply for asylum, guaranteed under American law.

It was a policy conceived by a Tom Homan, who went on to become acting ICE Director. Homan came up with the idea in 2003 after he was sent to investigate a tragedy of 17 people dying of heat stroke and suffocation in a tractor trailer carrying them into the United States. His conclusion was that separating families would be more humane than them ending up dead. In other words, a terrible idea is better than an even worse one.

None of it of course, deals with the heart of the matter, that these hapless people are coming to the United States based on lies being propagated by both Republicans and the cartels taking advantage of them. For Republicans, it isn’t just that not really wanting to fix this problem is the point, but that the cruelty is the point also. Moreover, the chaos is the point too because, well, it’s just so…useful, for bringing their “new order” out of it.

“Killer’s” Cartel Connections

“You are killers. You are kings.”

-The mantra Fred Trump Sr. would pound into the ears of his three sons[11]

Anyone who has seriously tracked the career of Donald Trump knows that much of his business model has been to launder mob money from around the world through his real estate projects. He has in fact, long-been “mobbed up, perhaps in ways and to depths we can hardly conceive of.

And he admits it. Not just his fawning love for the Al Capones of the world, but by the confessions of his sons:

Don Jr. at a 2008 business conference: “In terms of high-end product influx [laundered cash] into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Eric Trump to Golf magazine, 2014: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

The big guy himself? “I have no dealings with Russia, I have no deals in Russia, I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away.”

Of course you have. And Russia, going as far back as the 1980s was just for starters. After a series of 1990s casino bankruptcies, inflating assets, and building a reputation no one wanted to be associated with, The Donald was having a hard time getting bank loans. The only one that would touch him was Deutsche Bank which, despite the German-sounding name, has a reputation for being a front for Russian Jewish mobster money.

What saved him was the idea of a purported Christian Evangelical, who came up with the idea for The Apprentice. Once it debuted in 2004, Trump began to gain a false notoriety for being a successful businessman. This gave him renewed credibility to simply sell his famous brand around the world. Instead of having to raise money to build it himself, he would simply sell the Trump name on real estate to other mobsters, I’m sorry, legit businessmen, who would finance it themselves.

That’s how good his name was in mobster/con man circles around the world. He was such a reliable money launderer that they gave him an ongoing percentage of the profits. One of these mobs was a Latin American cartel, as this monumental investigation uncovered.

Now, I’m not omniscient like God, nor do I have any hard evidence that Donald Trump is in partnership with south-of-the-border cartels who are now taking over human trafficking, the selling of children around the world to the morbidly-rich[12] and the like. Circumstantial evidence is never conclusive, but given the character of certain people, their past behavior, who they associate with and what they’re known for, it’s still legitimate speculation.

Yes, I know that as President, Trump has made a lot of threats toward these same networks. But it could be a form of just “rubbing out the competition” to make way for people he’s more in debt closer to.

Alternatively, “rubbing them out” may be a form of burying damning evidence (kompromat) they may be holding on him. That’s why I predict that if Donald Trump ever becomes President again, it will be the “king on the hill” game with his fellow autocrats around the world. A man with a pathological ego the size of his could never be satisfied with anything less.

You’re free to put two and two together for yourself. All I know is, when it comes to this guy, nothing would surprise me.

Update: Jan. 26, 2024

With hardly the ink dry on this article, I run across this piece by the redoubtable Heather Digby Parton, “Trump’s border power play is a push for civil war.” This issue may be just the trigger for a second Civil War, even before the next election. Obviously they’re spoiling for a fight.

Update #2: Jan. 27, 2024

Trump is making no bones about his opposition to a bipartisan border bill this weekend, that he might have a campaign issue to demagogue. This is why America is now the “can’t do” nation.

From Rawstory:

“In keeping with his often dark rhetoric on immigration, the former president said there was a ‘100 percent chance that there will be a major terrorist attack in the United States’ carried out by people crossing the border.”

Has he been on the phone to Putin, to be that certain? Sounds similar to the concern I had about Netanyahu in “Did Benjamin Netanyahu Just Threaten The US With A “Hamas” Attack?” This is what it means by the Antichrist will be “a master of intrigue” (Dan 8:23 NIV).

Notes:

[1] “[Impeachment Committee chairman] Comer has never really hidden that the investigation is fake. When asked by the New York Times about “investigating” a man who has done nothing illegal, Comer cracked that “the customer’s always right,” referring to donors and voters who want to see Biden harassed this way. The whole point of this has always been to create an illusion of scandal Republicans can use to deflect criticism from Trump’s actual crimes and misdeeds.” -Amanda Marcotte, https://www.salon.com/2024/01/25/dont-let-primary-dominance-deceive-you–behind-the-curtain-the-is-tearing-itself-apart/

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mar-a-lago-christmas-trip/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHIx8uHIK7Q

[4] https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/apr/26/greg-abbott-refers-bidens-open-border-policies-are/

[5] Ibid. –“We followed up for sources. She referred to a clip of Democratic candidates, including Biden, saying crossing the border illegally should be a civil offense, not a criminal offense. She also referred to Biden saying deportation should focus on people unlawfully in the U.S. who commit crimes. Biden didn’t say “open borders,” but Abbott regards these types of policies as “open-border policies.””

[6] https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-doesnt-have-open-border-policy-so-why-do-republicans-say-otherwise-1672356

[7] Ibid.

[8] Note 2 above.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “The Presidential Transition Act of 1963, amended by The Presidential Transitions Effectiveness Act of 1988, The Presidential Transition Act of 2000, The Presidential Transition Improvements Act of 2015, and the Presidential Records Act (PRA) govern Presidential transitions.” https://www.archives.gov/presidential-records/support-to-the-white-house/presidential-transitions

[11] https://donclasenseriousguy.com/martial-law-and-the-2020-election/

[12] A term coined by Thom Hartmann.