Former acting Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan, responding to reporting from Newsmax border correspondent Jaeson Jones, agreed Saturday that the situation is a matter of national security because of the growing strength of the Mexican cartels involved.
"This is not about immigration," Morgan said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "That's what this White House and the open border advocates want to make this about. We need to put this aside. How much data, how much more information and real-time data do we need to see that our borders are not secure?"
Also on Saturday, Jones shared exclusive drone footage obtained by Newsmax showing a drone operated by a U.S. private security company recording footage of up to 50 armed gunmen associated with the Sinoloa drug cartel who were located about 300 yards from the Arizona-Mexico border.
The gunmen, in a period of 45 minutes, fired 50 to 150 rounds of ammunition at the drone, Jones reported.
"We can't forget about the national security implications and the public safety threats to the American people by these cartels, as we have lost over 100,000 people just to fentanyl and two deadly drugs in this country like methamphetamine," said Jones, a retired captain with the Texas Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division who commanded the Texas Rangers Border Security Operations Center.
The Sinaloa cartel is fractured between two factions, Jones reported, and the location filmed by the drone is one where "most of the fentanyl and methamphetamine is moved into the United States.
"It's an example of the level of failures occurring at the southwest border," Jones said. "I will say it again and again, what we are witnessing in Mexico and at the southwest border is the largest U.S. intelligence failure since 9-11."
"As Jaeson said, this is not about immigration," said Morgan. "This is about national security. Those videos show just how powerful, just how influential, just how organized the Mexican cartels are. They own our southwest border."
Law enforcement officials, he added, are unable to do their jobs to protect the nation against the set of complex threats because they are working too hard to control the surge of immigrants.
"Illegal immigration is an important subset of this because that's what drives our borders to be open," he said. "It pulls agents off the front line and hands operational control over to the Mexican cartels so drugs could pour in, criminals can pour in and national security threats can pour in. It's happening every day, all day long."
Jones called on the Biden administration to declare the cartels as terrorist organizations to use the tools of national power against them and said he hopes President Joe Biden will have a "real stern conversation"with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during their upcoming summit in Mexico City next week.
Morgan agreed that the United States needs to go after the cartels "with the same level of commitment, resolve and resources that we do with terrorist organizations."
He also called on Biden to act as former President Donald Trump did and threaten Mexico with tariffs if something isn't done to push back against the cartels and stop the flow of migrants that is making the border less secure.
Morgan added that the United States must also go after China, which is sending chemicals to Mexico for use in manufacturing drugs, and that as the United States knows where the drug labs are, "we can locate and we can destroy them."
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