Sara Carter: Biden's immigration policy – this is how you embolden human traffickers, drug cartels

Thousands of migrants are fleeing from Central America to the United States border, again. On bus, foot and train many will do whatever they can to survive the long journey with the promise that a better life awaits them in America.

Thousands more will make the trek by this spring when the weather gets warmer and those numbers are expected to surpass anything previously seen before, according to federal law enforcement officials who recently spoke with me.

"We're expecting a huge influx this year along the Southern border," said a Border Patrol agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

"No one wants to fix the problem. It's going to be the same ol' thing but worse. They don't care about these people because they (the Biden administration) would actually put a stop to this, not use them in some sort of game -- just look at the trains piling up in Mexico -- the smugglers are having a field day at our expense."

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In one video circulating among federal law enforcement officials working along the border, and allegedly filmed by Mexican authorities last week, hundreds of migrants are seen cheering on top of 'La Bestia,' one of the many networks of freight trains running through Mexico from its southernmost border with Guatemala to the U.S. border.

In English 'La Bestia,' means 'The Beast,' and for good reason. It’s a dangerous part of the journey for the migrants riding on top of its metal train cars and many lives have been lost on its tracks.

This time, however, the promises being made by the drug cartels and human smugglers to the migrants are true: President Joe Biden's administration is more lenient on illegal immigrants, has paused the construction of the border wall and is promising to develop an immigration policy to give amnesty to the roughly 11 million-plus illegal immigrants in the United States.

Senior Research Fellow Lora Ries, an immigration expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Department of Homeland Security acting deputy chief of staff, said recently that, "[Biden’s] executive orders are designed to do one thing: end policies that have helped halt the uncontrolled flow of migrants to the border, undermine the rule of law, and usher in a new era where the U.S. government becomes an active participant in facilitating illegal immigration. We can certainly expect to see more caravans and a rush of illegal immigration that will overwhelm our border and immigration system."

Ries’ point is backed by federal law enforcement officials familiar with drug cartel and human trafficking operations along the porous southern border. Migrants apprehended at the border often reveal the methods used by the traffickers to lure them to the U.S. For the most part, it is based on lax U.S. policies and the migrants are advised by the smugglers on what they need to say to U.S. authorities to avert deportation once they cross the border illegally.

The cost is great. Traffickers charge hefty sums from the poor migrants who sometimes sell everything they have to ensure the crossing. If they fail to pay, the outcome can lead to death, enslavement by the smugglers, prostitution and many times being forced to mule drugs across the border until the debt is paid off.

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What the Biden administration isn't addressing or is refusing to acknowledge is that the lax policies lead to more human suffering.

Human traffickers and drug cartels always require a substantial fee, as well as a so-called tax to get migrants across the border.

Not one migrant heading to the border does so without paying the cartels a tax and the smugglers a fee.

Moreover, those fees never ensure safety in travel. Rape, sickness and death are the demons many of the migrants, including unaccompanied minors, confront along their journey.

I've interviewed many young migrant children traveling alone to the U.S. border over the years. Many of them are victims of horrendous abuse and crime without any hope of justice.

Biden's new immigration policies, like those of his predecessors, do not address the real dangers facing the migrants. These people are used as political footballs and the hundreds of millions of dollars they collectively pay to the cartels yearly have given rise to deadly cartels like, Sinaloa, Juarez, Los Zetas and numerous others that wage war on our nation, plague our neighbor Mexico with corruption and poison our children with narcotics.

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Biden lauds that his executive orders on family separation, border security and legal immigration. His administration has said reversing the strict policies established under President Trump are more humane and productive for U.S. national security. However, the swiftness with which Biden signed these nine executive actions on immigration left little time for an assessment of what has or hasn’t been working.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had a difficult time at a recent press conference responding to questions that suggested that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is no longer deporting illegal immigrants convicted of driving under the influence, assault, drug based crimes, solicitation, as well as other criminal behavior.

Psaki didn’t directly address the question but instead kicked the ball over to the Department of Homeland Security.

A DHS official, who spoke to me recently, said ICE officers are being kept from deporting many of these "illegal alien criminals, including those with far worse criminal records because of these new policies under Biden, which put everyone at risk."

Moreover, this progressive agenda will only perpetuate the crimes against humanity and the suffering faced by illegal immigrants when they arrive in a nation where promises made are met with a very different reality.

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It is also presenting a very real risk to U.S. citizens, as criminal illegal aliens are not facing deportation after serving their sentences in U.S. prisons but being released to the public.

Who will be in charge of the changes immigration policies imposed by the Biden administration? Alejandro Mayorkas.

He is currently awaiting Senate confirmation as Biden's Homeland Security secretary. He's expected to lead a task force on family separation, focused largely on reuniting parents and children.

The number of children actually separated from their families is uncertain. Allegedly, more than 5,000 children are identified by the government in court documents but remember many children traveled alone, or with people other than their families to the United States.

The real villain is not the U.S. policies under Trump but the decades of failure by lawmakers on the two sides of the aisle to enforce the laws at the border.

Family separation is of course, tragic and particularly for the children. However, it is not as prevalent in the United States as some lawmakers make it seem. The horrors perpetrated by the cartels, the forced separation of some families have been enabled by the failure of U.S. administrations, both present and past, to adhere to a consistent border policy, exacerbating an already dangerous situation.

The progressive and lax U.S. policies perpetuate decades-long dangerous circumstances for the poorest migrants, as well as the American people.

Several weeks ago, the former head of Guatemalan intelligence Mario Durate, spoke to me on "The Sara Carter Show," about the thousands of migrants that recently entered his nation along the Honduran border.

He said the people using the migrants and pulling the strings, "are the real criminals, because you’re talking about kids, children, women, young women, being exposed to all these pedophiles, these heartless cartel members. You just have to look at Homeland Security statistics on their websites. How many of those Latino girls that reached the border were raped multiple times with STDs, some of them even pregnant? That’s what these kids are exposed to. And then you’re talking about the elderly, most of them don’t make it all the way over there."

Duarte is right. It's a disgrace that U.S. policies, along with those of our Southern neighbors, don't take into account the reality of what is actually happening along the border.

Why? Because these people are nothing more than tools in a corrupt political system that uses them for votes, to manipulate the media and as cheap menial labor.

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Duarte said those involved in organizing the caravans "should be investigated very harshly. And they are not only in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, a lot of them are in the United States. There’s also a lot in Europe and other countries, and a lot of them are unfortunately hidden inside multilateral agencies as well."

I agree with him but why would that ever happen, if it's our own governments perpetuating the criminal and dangerous behavior.

Follow Sara A. Carter on Twitter @SaraCarterDC.