Former border agent sounds alarm on drug cartel tax, debts faced by migrants
Retired Texas Public Safety Captain Jaeson Jones says migrants face tax, significant debt to cartels for journey to US border.
The use of Mexican drug cartels to ferry migrants into the U.S. is an urgent national security issue, retired Texas Department of Public Safety Captain Jaeson Jones told "The Faulkner Focus" on Thursday.
JONES: While we’re really concerned, and for good reason, [about] the number of unaccompanied alien children and the amount of people surging, now, surging on our southwest border, we cannot forget about the national security implications because we’re seeing people — I want to stress this to everyone watching — people coming from all over the world. What the Mexican cartels do very effectively is, they remain in the shadows. But at the end of the day, they’re the ones that are responsible for gaining what is known as the piso, or the tax, from all of these people crossing.
...
To them, if we were sitting down with them right now ... just so you know, they would tell you that people are the gift that keeps giving because, one, they pay up front. When they cross into the United States, let’s say they’re apprehended by Border Patrol, they go back, they have to pay again. But if they can’t pay, now they are indebted and they are indebted to a criminal organization in a foreign country once they’re able to make it into the United States. That’s just where we are. We have some serious national security issues at our border and it is time to address them and it has been decades that we’ve been talking about it."
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
