At the end of January, Mexican authorities found a cache of ammunition and drugs in Tamaulipas— a rural area near the Texas border. Of their findings, authorities seized almost 1,500 pounds of marijuana, over 4,100 ammunition magazines for AR-15 and AK-47 rifles and 6,300 rounds, according to Breitbart.
The region, known as “La Riberena," is located south of Starr County and is a popular smuggling route into the United States. Breitbart noted that the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas has been attempting to seize control of the region from the Gulf Cartel, leading to an increase in violence.
“Imagine how great it would be if Mexico always did their part to protect the border," gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines told the Lone Star Standard. "Texas owns all the bridges coming across the Rio Grande, and when I am governor, we will shut down commercial traffic from Mexico until they start doing everything they can to stop this invasion.”
Last spring, Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) introduced the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act, which would establish the Reynosa/Los Metros faction of the Gulf Cartel and the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
"These are organizations designed to intimidate, terrorize, and to basically create havoc at our border, and I think we ought to treat them as the terrorist organizations that they are,” Huffines said, noting the cartels’ practices of beheading or burning their victims alive.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agent Valeria Morales told KTSM-TV El Paso that Mexican criminal organizations make a lot of money from human smuggling and charge anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 depending on the person and where they are coming from.
“They have pick-up drivers in the United States. They recruit the youth to drive. They have stash house coordinators, people that transport these people from the stash houses to their final destination,” Morales said.
According to Mexico’s National Search Commission, more than 95,000 people from the country are missing, many would-be migrants suspected to be victims of violence by the cartels smuggling them into the U.S.
“They don’t see these migrants as people. They see them as commodities, like drugs. And if [the trafficked migrants] ‘belong’ to a rival cartel, they’re going to kill them,” ex-El Paso police officer and cartel expert Robert Almonte told the New York Post, stating some cartels are making $30 million a month in human trafficking.
This comes alongside crimes reported throughout the United States.
In December, drug cartels in the Mexican city of Chihuahua kidnapped and murdered 13 migrants en route to illegally sneak across the U.S. border. Mexican security officials told the Dallas Morning News that the deceased— who were allegedly headed to the Midland-Odessa and Dallas areas— were killed during a "turf war” between rival gangs.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told WIBW in March that Mexican cartels are now making more money from human trafficking than they are from drug smuggling. Marshall blamed the border crisis partly on President Joe Biden's decision to reverse Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy.
Huffines will face Gov. Greg Abbott in the gubernatorial primary on March 1. From 2015 to 2019, he represented Texas' 16th State Senate District. Huffines is the CEO of Huffines Communities, a Dallas/Fort Worth-based real estate development firm.
Abbott is serving as the 48th governor of Texas. Before winning that post, Abbott was the longest-serving attorney general of Texas.
