But Biden’s border crisis has also created a golden opportunity for drug cartels, human traffickers, and those seeking to harm American citizens. Along with a record number of illegal border crossings, a record number of individuals on the FBI’s terrorism watch list have been apprehended at the border — 169 in 2023 alone (and again, that’s just the number caught by border patrol, not including those among the 1.7 million “gotaways” and countless others who infiltrate undetected). What’s worse, thanks to the sheer chaos at the border and the Biden administration’s policy of releasing as many illegal aliens as possible, Amer- icans can’t even be confident that suspected terrorists will be arrested and detained by law enforcement.
In one case reported by NBC News in April, border patrol officials revealed that Mohammad Kharwin, an Afghan national on the terrorism watch list, had been arrested and released after entering the country illegally in 2023. Kharwin is allegedly a member of HIG, a radical anti-Western paramil- itary organization, yet was released under the Biden administration’s “alternatives to detention” program and allowed to apply for asylum and fly domestically in the United States. Biden’s border crisis has also given free rein to drug cartels peddling deadly fentanyl and other toxic substances in American communities. With law enforcement overwhelmed by the surge of people crossing the border, it has become far easier for drug traffickers to sneak through undetected.
Customs and Border Patrol agents seized an astonishing 850 percent more fentanyl in FY 2023 compared to FY 2019 — a sign that, according to law enforcement, far more escaped detection and is now being sold to drug users throughout the coun- try. As a result, the US saw its most overdose deaths ever in 2023 — more than 112,000. That figure represents a 65 percent jump from the roughly 68,000 overdose deaths in 2018 and a staggering 133 percent increase from the roughly 48,000 deaths in 2014. Human trafficking has also seen a steady rise under the Biden admin- istration and has now become a billion-dollar industry. Multiple federal investigations have uncov- ered migrant children being forced to work in factories throughout the United States, in addition to the horrific practice of sex slavery.
IlLeGaL cRoSsInGs rIsE aT sOuThErN uS bOrDeR Number of migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border, by fiscal year
3M
Trump Administration Biden Administration
2M
1M
0M
FY 2013
FY 2014
FY 2015
FY 2016
FY 2017
FY 2018
FY 2019
FY 2020
FY 2021
FY 2022
FY 2023
FY 2024
Includes migrants apprehended and released and migrants given “legal” court appearances. Source: US Customs and Border Protection
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30 • AMAC Magazine
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