Border security is a national security concern. This series makes that message clearer. In Lara Logan Has No Agenda, Fox Nation correspondent Lara Logan traveled to the U.S./Mexico border to shed more light on the current situation that Americans, illegal immigrants, and Law Enforcement face there.
Chaos on the Border
Lara Logan Has No Agenda had my attention after just a few minutes. Lara’s willingness to insert herself into precarious situations to obtain an unbiased narrative is incredible. Each time she goes into harm’s way for a story I’m intrigued — and this time proved to be no different.
Lara begins her story in Tenancingo, Mexico where she’s stopped by multiple Tenancingo Policia Municipal Officers. The officers warned the crew that groups of residents were forming on each end of the street near Lara and the crew’s location and that a week earlier “outsiders” had been lynched. The local police are said to have a deal with the town’s traffickers and therefore do more work to “run interference” for the town’s illegal operations than they do to end them. The locals in Tenancingo will seemingly do whatever it takes to protect their town’s secrets. “The town was built on sex trafficking, where the family business handed down for generations is serial rape.”
The Sins of Sinaloa in ‘Lara Logan Has No Agenda’
In the second episode, Logan highlights Sinaloa, Mexico, and its role in cartel violence and drug distribution. Logan met with multiple undercover agents, both Mexican and American, and discussed the strength of the current Mexican cartels. One of the Mexican officers said, “I believe the cartels have surpassed the government in the level of strength that exists in Mexico.”
That sentiment is made clearer when Logan and her former Navy SEAL-led security team visited the cemetery in Sinaloa. The burial buildings of high-ranking cartel members are nicer than any home shown in the town. It is a clear indication of the power, influence, and wealth flowing through this deadly city.
Logan interviewed Mark Morgan, Acting Commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who said, “What we don’t talk about enough is the [American] national security crisis. The drugs, the criminal aliens, the gang members coming into our country every single day. That is overshadowed by our discussion on the humanitarian side.”
‘Lara Logan Has No Agenda’ Shows the Multilayered Crisis
Clearly, we should be cognizant of the humanitarian crisis illegal immigrants face on the border. Yet, much of it isn’t caused by American policy failure, but by the way these “dreamers” are treated by Mexican cartels and human traffickers. In the best of situations, cartels charge many thousands of dollars per person to facilitate a border crossing. In the worst, cartel members kidnap, rape, and kill them, some for lack of payment, others seemingly for sport. Either way, it’s a deadly business.
Lara interviewed a volunteer Sheriff’s Deputy from Brooks County, Texas. The deputy said there are estimates that as many as 80 percent of women who cross the border are raped during the process. The deputy also said he has come across at least four “rape trees” while searching for illegal immigrants in his county. A “rape tree” is the name given to trees that contain women’s underwear and are used by the smugglers as a symbol of their sexual conquests.
Let’s be clear. These women and girls aren’t raped by American immigration policy or improper holding facilities at the border: they are raped by men who are part of Mexico-based criminal syndicates. Men who choose to believe that the value of a dollar is more than that of human life. As Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said of the illegal human trafficking, “And guess who gets rich [through it all]? The cartels.”
Beyond the humanitarian crisis is one that even more directly affects our national safety: the smuggling, by the cartels, of tons of illegal narcotics that are poisoning our streets and killing our youth. Further, cartel members are immigrating both legally and illegally to the U.S. to expand cartel influence to both the streets and the government halls of America. And there is evidence to show they are meeting with some success. After all, without demand, there wouldn’t be profitability and Americans are demanding all of what the cartels are offering.
North of the Border
“Border Patrol has a budget, but the cartels have money to burn.”
This sums up the crisis on our southern border. The cartels only need to get it right occasionally, but CBP has to get it right without fail. And the cartels have the money to do it on a grand scale.
Some people I’ve spoken to earnestly wonder why we should consider our Southwest border a national security crisis. CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan makes it clear. “Think about this for a second. When you’re in Ohio and you have an overdose of meth or heroin, it’s most likely that the drugs came from the Southwest border. I call every town, city, and state in this country a border town, border city, border state.”
Tens of thousands of people trying to cross the U.S. border illegally every month seeking asylum provides cover for a much more dangerous criminal element using these large crowds as cover for its own activities. CBP agents aren’t just intercepting illegal immigrants from Central and South America, but also countries like Serbia, Yemen, Turkey, and Iran. A flood of border crossings all but invites terrorist organizations to use the crisis to smuggle terrorists, weapons, and explosives into the States.
Every town in America is suffering the effects of a powerful Mexican cartel influence. Regardless of the issues occurring specifically on our southern border, though, what undoubtedly affects our day-to-day lives across the country is the effect the drug smuggling has on areas hundreds or thousands of miles from the border.
From exotic mansions strewn across the scenic vistas of Mexico, cartel heads are paying local farmers to grow crops that will later become illegal drugs. Those illegal drugs will then be smuggled straight into America. Drugs that start in Mexico as small plants on remote countryside farms are killing people at tables around middle America. And it’s getting worse.
The Human Cost
“The story of human suffering doesn’t begin or end at the southern border. As you leave the border towns in Texas, there’s only one road heading north; U.S. Highway 281 stretches for more than 1,800 miles. It’ll take you from Mexico all the way to Canada. As long as you make it through here, the border patrol checkpoint at Falfurrias… their last line of defense.”
The Falfurrias checkpoint is roughly 80 miles inland from the Mexican border and is located in Brooks County, a small Texas county led by Brooks County Sheriff Urbino “Benny” Martinez. Martinez is tasked with constantly patrolling a vast expanse of desert, the locals have dubbed “the corridor of death,” searching for immigrants.
Regardless of their original purpose for crossing the border, many people who attempt to traverse through this small Texas county pay the ultimate price for their choices.
Fox Nation’s Lara Logan Has No Agenda then takes us to Queens, New York, one of the locations that girls sex-trafficked from Tenancingo, Mexico are brought. According to an active sex trafficker Lara interviewed, most of the girls he smuggles from Tenancingo, Mexico to New York City are 15-years-old or younger. He said the reason he traffics girls this young is that girls who are 17-18-years old just don’t fetch the same price in America as the younger ones do. He then said that virgins are much more expensive. It costs roughly $20,000-$25,000 to have sex with one.
He added that for him, human trafficking is a multi-generational family business in Tenancingo. Paradoxically, he believes what he does is a sickness, which is impossible to disagree with.
Lara Logan Has No Agenda ends by considering the real effect that trafficking has on not only a nation but on the world. Logan said there are an estimated 40 million trafficked women worldwide and approximately 50,000 in the United States alone. As with any other illicit activity, if the market wasn’t there, then the cartels and traffickers wouldn’t have a business. It is sad that New York City, one of the bastions of American pride, has such an appetite for underage girls that an entire town in Mexico is thriving off of its perversion.
Lara concludes, “Many say that Mexico has lost the fight [against the cartels] and America doesn’t even know it’s at war,” which aptly describes our current state.
America is embroiled in war. This one isn’t happening in Afghanistan and the opponent doesn’t wear a state-sponsored uniform. We are at war with ideologies, corruption, and evil that many Americans choose to ignore so they aren’t hit with unadulterated reality. The reality is that the war has begun.
As Logan’s reporting makes abundantly clear, either we secure all of our borders or the violence we hear about in Mexico will be headed to your town’s Main Street. Once you see it there, however, it may just be too late.
This article was originally published in May 2021.
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