Op-Ed: Illegal immigration is bringing slavery into America

This article originally appeared in the Washington Times on July 1, 2023

There is a very real human cost to open borders: modern-day slavery.

Right now, our southern border is the least secure in history, and Mexican drug cartels are making a killing by taking advantage of migrants on the journey to our country.

Sadly, migrant women and children are often raped, robbed, and forced to smuggle drugs, and those who cannot pay their fee, or “piso,” for passage to the U.S. are trapped in indentured servitude in fear for their own lives or their families.

More than 6 million illegal aliens have crossed our border in the last 27 months. This is human suffering on a massive scale.

This wou not be happening if not for the Biden administration’s unlawful open border policies, which continue to encourage millions more migrants to subject themselves to exploitation and make it easier for cartels to generate billions of dollars in smuggling fees.

That said, the physical, emotional and sexual abuse on the journey north is just half of the harrowing reality. The other half is the largely overlooked story of countless migrant children suffering on this side of the border in our own communities.

In February, The New York Times released a bombshell investigation, “Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.” It shed light on the lives of migrant children once they reach the border and are released into American communities.

Read the full op-ed in the Washington Times