Blas Nunez-Neto, the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for border and immigration policy, said Mexican cartels are taking advantage of the Biden administration's catch-and-release policy to grow richer by planting more of their migrant clients into American jobs.
"We see migrants now routinely paying smuggling organizations vast sums of money — often more than $10,000 to $15,000 — to facilitate their journey to the border," Nunez-Neto said during an online discussion July 20 with the Migration Policy Institute. "This is so lucrative, in fact, that we are now seeing the drug cartels increasingly becoming a key player in not just collecting taxes for people who transit through their territory — which is what we saw historically — but actually moving people and becoming deeply involved in human smuggling, not just in Mexico, but throughout the region, including in Colombia and [the] Darien [Gap]."
There is a huge backlog of asylum cases in U.S. immigration court and Nunez-Neto called out Congress for not providing other legal means for migrants to enter the country. Because of that, Nunez-Neto said migrants are using the courts as a proxy legal pathway to enter the U.S. and work while they stay here.
He added the U.S. does not have enough resources to keep pace with the changing demographics and increasing number of migrants at the border.
"Why would someone pay that much money to come to the border?" Nunez-Neto said. "And I think the simple answer is that once they're in the immigration court system and they have filed the requisite [asylum] paperwork, they are eligible for employment authorization — which is obviously something that we support — but that means that they have years to live in the U.S. and go through the [asylum] process and earn money and they can support their family members back home during that process.
"All of these factors together are just drawing people to come because even if someone is ordered remove after four to six years, that is still a substantial amount of time for people to be in the United States and working through the process."