Cable news networks and newspaper headlines continue to deal the crisis along our 2,000 mile border with Mexico, but despite the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration continues to ignore the continuing, mounting, and evolving disaster.
Along with illegal immigrants pouring into our nation by the millions, the invasion floods our nation with illicit drugs, which is among the reasons an average of 150 Americans die daily from fentanyl. It also breeds violent crimes like the Laken Riley tragedy, which is the most recent example of a young American whose life was brutally cut short by an illegal alien that Biden willingly escorted into our country.
It brings foreign enemies intent on destroying our nation from within as evidenced by the fact that in 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol encountered only 450 Chinese nationals at our southern border, but that number exploded to 24,314 in 2023, and estimates for to date in 2024 are already 19,000.
Finally, it is the influx of the estimated six to ten million aliens on our already-strained social services – children in New York being forced to learn remotely because their school facilities are being used to house aliens, and VA doctors are handling medical claims of illegal immigrants instead of caring for our veterans.
Unless action is taken soon, the question is not if, but when, our nation will collapse.
We must take immediate, concrete, and permanent steps to close the border, complete a physical barrier along its entirety, and stop the invasion once and for all. We then must take affirmative and aggressive steps to deport those who are here illegally and enforce the stay-in-Mexico policy. These actions are required to save our country from crumbling under the weight of the largest land invasion the United States has ever experienced.
That said, there is also a long game that we cannot ignore. In the past several decades, the U.S. has largely turned a blind eye toward the state of affairs in Central and South American nations, many of which are communist and socialist regimes, as former Soviet satellites and the Middle East have commanded our attention..
As a fresh law school graduate, my first job was in San Antonio, Texas, which is one of the largest metropolitan areas closest to our southern border. I witnessed firsthand the degree to which the Mexican government has totally relinquished control of its country to the drug cartels.
This was over a decade ago, at a time when our border was far more secure, but, still, the cartels had forced many individuals and businesses to legally relocate to the U.S. The reality then and now is that if a person or company becomes remotely successful in Mexico, the cartel demands a cut of those profits. As a real estate lawyer, I was proud to help some of those individuals who had legally immigrated to Texas to restart their lives free of cartel intimidation. In my time in Texas, it became clear that the scale and pervasiveness of the cartels’ control of Mexico cannot be understated.
Since that time, the state of democracy and freedom in Mexico and other Latin American nations has continued to deteriorate. Venezuela illegally claimed oil-rich areas of Guyana and appears to be preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of its democratic neighbor, with virtually no media coverage in the U.S. and no comment by the Biden administration.
In December 2023, eleven pastors and other Christians associated with Mountain Gateway, a missionary organization based in Texas, were imprisoned by the Nicaraguan government without access to legal counsel or clarity as to the allegations against them – fortunately, the Alabama congressional delegation, led by Robert Aderholt, has drawn national attention to this crisis.
Cuba is, naturally, a Chinese ally, and Brazil and Bolivia are quickly becoming Chinese surrogates as China buys roughly one-third of all Brazilian exports and is a partner in a $2.3 billion lithium mining operation in Bolivia. Elsewhere throughout Latin America, failing economies, cartel culture, and disregard for human rights make the area a ripe ground for full-scale colonization by China.
We will continue to have hoards of refugees seeking asylum at our southern border so long as the rest of our hemisphere continues to be ruled by corrupt regimes.
As a child in rural Alabama, I was always told to “nip it in the bud” – to try to find the source of the problem instead of just addressing the effects. If we truly want a long-term solution to the border crisis, we have to take a much tougher stance against Mexico and hold it accountable for its cartel culture.
We have to encourage nations like Guyana and Argentina that are fighting for free governments and elections.
And finally, we have to candidly acknowledge that Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia are proxies for China and treat them accordingly.
Caroleene Dobson is an attorney, wife, and mother, raised on her family’s fifth-generation cattle farm in Beatrice, Alabama, running for the Republican nomination for Alabama’s Second Congressional District.
