We’ve all read the headlines on the border crisis and seen the pathetic Biden administration tripping over itself trying to make us all believe it’s not as bad as the reports indicate. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s far worse than the Biden-apologists in the media are telling us. And it’s been far worse than we’ve all thought for years.
My show this week is focused in part on immigration. Not wanting to just rehash information we’ve all heard, I thought I’d dig a little deeper and provide my audience with a more authentic account of the situation at the border. So, I reached out to a young girl I know who’s a DACA recipient and asked her if it would be possible for me to speak to her mother about how she first came into this country. Despite all of the debate and statistics on immigration circulating on the internet, Americans generally don’t understand how the process takes place. How do migrants actually get into this country illegally and why does it continue to happen at such a high rate? So I asked the girl’s mother and ended up having a conversation that absolutely blew my mind.
This woman started her journey to America in Guatemala 13 years ago. When she crossed the border illegally, she was a Guatemalan citizen. She has since married an American and has been granted a green card and thus legal status. Her first step required her handing over $3,000 to a drug cartel member, the entry fee for what would prove a harrowing journey that would cost some of the other travelers their lives.
A group of some 200 others trying to get into America, who had also been forced to fill the pockets of the cartel, met at a farm in Guatemala where they were picked up by a massive truck loaded with a lightweight good — plastic cups. The cartels, she said, make sure that the truck has something that’s lightweight because under the goods is a hollowed-out area into which the 200 migrants are packed. The first leg of the journey lasts around 24 hours, during which time all the travelers were given was a bottle of water. The woman told me that there was also a bucket in the back to go to the bathroom.
Over the course of that first leg of the trip, she said, the truck came to several checkpoints where people working for the Mexican government would spray the bottom of the truck with pepper spray, trying to see if there were any illegal aliens hidden inside. If the officials didn’t hear any coughing, they allowed the truck to pass. The coyotes, she said, would threaten to slit the throats of the passengers if they coughed. This routine happened about 10 times.
After that nightmarish ride, the migrants would be crammed into a house that she said would have hundreds of people in it and where they waited for over a week for a new transport to take them on the next leg of the journey.
Eventually, the group of migrants reached the point in which they had to walk through the desert. The woman told me that it took her group five days hiking, and at times running from Mexican authorities, through the desert to make it to the border. For that grueling trek, the migrants were handed backpacks containing just a couple of gallons of water and some meager portions of food. During the desert hike, she recalled how one man collapsed, saying he couldn’t go on any further. A woman also gave out during the brutal hike. The two were left to die out there while the coyotes pushed everyone else to keep moving.
When they reached the American border, she told me, they all breathed a sigh of relief. Once you actually hit American soil, you know you’re finally safe, she said. The threat — and consequences — of being caught is far more real on the Mexican side.
She crossed over in Arizona, where an SUV driven by an American was waiting for her group. The traffickers proceeded to pack 24 people into that vehicle, which then drove them all to Los Angeles to a house that held hundreds of people. Now, if you find yourself, like me, doubting the story because it all sounds so surreal, I’ll point you to a recent story that came out of California, where an SUV holding 25 illegal immigrants got into a horrific crash, leaving 13 migrants dead.
Once she arrived in Los Angeles, her family had to wire another $3,000 to the traffickers for her dangerous journey to finally end. The final payment received, the migrants were taken to various cities across the country. She told me that when she arrived in Virginia, she already had a job lined up for her at a national pizza franchise.
What I am describing to you is just one person’s story among millions, and, obviously, I cannot attest to all the details of it. But the larger takeaway is that what is happening at our border is not just happening at our border. It’s happening throughout the United States. It’s beyond a crisis. It’s a network of individuals perpetuating this ongoing humanitarian crisis — on this side of the border.
For years, I have been asking why the Mexican government isn’t doing anything about illegal immigration. Why are the Mexicans allowing these migrants to race through Mexico forcing us to work so hard to secure the border? But in this woman’s experience, it was the opposite: the migrants feared Mexican authorities far more than Americans, whom they generally felt were actually inviting them in. They were being welcomed by a highly organized network that provided them protection, a place to live and even a job.
When then-candidate Trump stood up and declared, “I’m going to build a wall,” the politicians and the news networks exploded with rage. They did not want that wall built. They still don’t want that wall built. Why? It’s because illegal immigration is actually a well-run business operation that operates the most efficiently on the American side of the border.
Left-wing activists and politicians are effectively sending out an invitation to migrants, offering sanctuary cities, hotel rooms, college to college, tuition, you name it. Who, we must ask, profits?
I don’t work for the United States government. I don’t work for the CIA, or the FBI or the DOJ. I simply asked a question of one woman — and what I learned laid out an entire network of criminal behavior. If I was able to learn all of that via a one-hour conversation, do you really believe that our Justice Department and FBI don’t know what’s going on?
It seems painfully obvious to me that the cartels aren’t just controlling the American borders, they’re also exerting control over aspects of American politics. It’s not a coincidence that at the very same time that tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are walking across our border, Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that voter ID is not a requirement in this country. I think the cartels want the money, but the Democrats want the power. Me? I just want the truth.
Candace Owens is an American writer, producer, conservative commentator and the host of “Candace.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.