The U.S. government is actively involved in making the U.S.-Mexico border crisis worse, according to a longtime immigration official who points to the explosion of heroin use in the U.S. as proof Obama administration claims of much tighter border security are largely fiction.
“The real way of determining border security is to look at the price and availability of heroin and cocaine,” explained Michael Cutler, who served many years as an immigration official with what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, combating drug trafficking, human smuggling and terrorism.
“Those chemicals are not produced in the United States,” he said. “They are purely smuggled in. We are in the midst of a heroin epidemic. Our border is nothing more than a speed bump.
“That heroin is behind a lot of the crime that we’re seeing. So while everyone’s talking about limiting how many bullets we should be putting in our guns and how we need to cut down in salt and sugar, why is no body addressing the issue of the damage that narcotics trafficking and narcotics use has on America and the crime rate?”
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, heroin use has been surging since 2007, nearly doubling from 373,000 yearly users to 669,000 in 2012. Heroin overdoses also increased 45 percent from 2006 to 2010. The boost in the drug’s popularity is widely believed to be the result of Latin American cartels importing a larger and cheaper supply across the border. A report released by the Mexican government in 2013 showed poppy production is overtaking marijuana as the choice drug crop in the country. Mexico is now the second-largest heroin producer in the world, after Afghanistan.
While American cocaine consumption fell by half between 2006 and 2010, the amount of marijuana consumed by Americans increased by more than 30 percent, according to a report compiled for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy by researchers affiliated with the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.
In 2011, the Border Patrol reportedly seized nearly 2 million pounds of marijuana, 7,461 pounds of cocaine, 1,704 pounds of methamphetamine and 328 pounds of heroin at checkpoints and stations near the border. In 2007 and 2008, the agency seized just 35 and 85 pounds of heroin, respectively, but that had number surged to 240 pounds in 2009 and 251 pounds in 2010.
In June 2014 so far, agents have reported seizure of more than $1.5 million worth of heroin along the border:
- June 17: Agents seized four packages of heroin wrapped around a woman’s midsection worth more than $141,000.
- June 17: Agents seized four packages of black tar heroin and six packages of brown heroin, with a total weight of more than 25 pounds and a value in excess of $354,000.
- June 16: Agents working at the El Paso port of entry seized 25.4 pounds of heroin with an estimated street value of $812,800 from the undercarriage of a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado.
- June 13: Agents seized 15 pounds of heroin packed into fire extinguishers concealed inside three commercial trucks at California’s Otay Mesa cargo facility.
- June 12: Agents in Calexico, California, arrested a 26-year-old woman after discovering almost a pound of heroin, with a street value of $9,000, concealed in her underwear.
- June 3: Agents seized 5.51 pounds of heroin, worth $66,120, near San Clemente, California
In March, Attorney General Eric Holder called the spike in American deaths from overdoses or heroin and prescription painkillers “an urgent and growing public health crisis.”
Tens of thousands of people have flooded the southern border this year, exponentially more than any other full year in recent memory. Many observers expect the numbers to swell into the hundreds of thousands.
As WND recently reported, the Department of Homeland Security appears to have low-balled its estimates of the number of unaccompanied alien children it’s publicly claiming will arrive in the U.S. during the fiscal year of 2014.
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Cutler calls himself a lifelong Democrat, but he said the unsecured border is a political problem where both parties are to blame.
“Most politicians, from both the Democrat and Republican parties, are thrilled to have foreign nationals surge across our borders. This isn’t an accident. This is something they have been doing everything in their power to encourage,” said Cutler, who argued that politicians are largely acting on the wishes of their donors.
“Campaign contributions are nothing more than legalized bribes,” he said. “The politicians are taking the money, and the people giving them the contributions have an expectation. As a federal agent for 30 years, I was not allowed to accept a cup of coffee. If you’re concerned that a cup of coffee might influence an agent’s objectivity, what do you think thousands of dollars does when given to a political candidate?”
He also pointed to the failure of the government to enforce border security laws as a key factor because people entering the nation illegally know they probably won’t be sent home.
Cutler asked, “If you’re on a highway that has EZ-Pass or a tollgate, and they were to suddenly create a third lane that says, ‘Free. No Speed Limit,’ what would it say about someone’s intelligence or state of mind if they would wait to pay a toll when all they have to do is drift into that third lane where there’s no speed limit and no toll?”
He said the federal government not only wants this to happen, but officials are breaking the law to make it happen and recent reports suggesting the Department of Homeland Security is hiring escorts to move illegals around the country are absolutely true.
“They’re actually using agents to bring these aliens into cities across the country,” Cutler said. “What the government is now doing is taking over the job of alien traffickers. If you go to the immigration laws, aiding, abetting, encouraging, inducing, harboring, shielding or transporting are all felonies. This is no longer a matter of what the president would call prosecutorial discretion and I call prosecutorial deception. We are now becoming the competition for the alien smugglers once they get to the border of the United States.”
“The starter’s pistol has been fired, and, for aspiring illegal aliens around the world, the finish line is the border of the United States of America.”
Much hand-wringing continues in Washington about how to solve the crisis unfolding along the border. Cutler said it’s really pretty simple, and he cautions Americans not to believe that every unaccompanied teenager is an innocent child in search of the American dream.
“Enforce the law. And we keep saying ‘young people.’ As an agent, I’ve encountered gang members who were 13 and 14 years old. We’ve seen kids get involved with carrying out murders for hire at age 13 because they knew they wouldn’t go to jail for a significant period of time. We have to be careful who we’re letting in,” Cutler said.
Cutler said he is staunchly opposed to any sort of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
“Comprehensive reform does not address the problem,” he said. “It would exacerbate the problem. It would give people lawful status. The argument is we can’t deport 11 million people. No one is talking about deporting 11 million. When you have drunk[en] drivers, nobody says, ‘The numbers are too great. Let’s just forget about it.’ You enforce the law as effectively as you can. The answer is deterrent.”
