Step.- President Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing the call-up of active duty military reservists to address “international drug trafficking” on the southern border. He did so ahead of the public health authority’s Title 42 expiration date in less than two weeks, on May 11.
Biden issued the order under the National Emergencies Act and in furtherance of an executive order he issued on December 15, 2021, “Imposing Sanctions on Foreign Persons Engaged in the Global Illicit Drug Trade.” That executive order “declared a national emergency to address the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by international drug trafficking.”
The latest executive order, issued Thursday, authorizes the Secretary of Defense “to respond to the national emergency.” It directs the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force to call up active duty reservists who would likely be sent to the southern border. The order also authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to direct the Coast Guard to call up active duty reservists.
In a subsequent letter to Congress, Biden wrote, effective April 27, that he was “authorizing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to order active duty of said Ready Reserve units and individual members under the jurisdiction of the Secretary in question”. as each one “deems necessary”.
Calling up the reserves “will ensure that the Department of Defense can adequately maintain its support for the Department of Homeland Security in relation to international drug trafficking along the Southwest border,” he wrote.
He did it two years after the governor of Texas. Greg Abbott led the Texas Army and Air National Guard to the southern border through the state’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star, which launched in March 2021. Texas has taken the lead in border security , doing the job that the federal government has refused to do, Abbott argues.
Title 42 is a Trump-era policy that allowed Border Patrol to return illegal border crossers to Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden’s December 2021 order authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions on foreign individuals and entities involved in the global illicit drug trade, including fentanyl. In it, he wrote that the illicit drug trade, including fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, “is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year, as well as countless other non-fatal overdoses at their own tragic human cost.”
The order does not identify the origin of the fentanyl crisis stemming from Mexico and the Mexican cartels. It states: “Drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations, and their enablers are the primary sources of illicit drugs and precursors that fuel the current opioid epidemic, as well as the drug-related violence that harms our communities.”
Biden issued the orders after Abbott repeatedly asked him to designate Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, something the Texas governor did via executive order last September. Abbott also sent eight letters to the president related to border security and has yet to receive a response.
Since March 2021, Texas Operation Lone Star officers have seized more than 382 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill more people in the United States. This excludes the volume of fentanyl seized by agents of the United States Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and other federal and state law enforcement agencies that is enough to kill the entire population of the United States several times times.
OLS law enforcement officers have also apprehended more than 367,000 illegal alien citizens and made more than 27,000 criminal arrests, with more than 25,000 felony charges reported as of April 21, according to the governor’s office. .
Since Biden took office, more than 6 million foreign nationals have been apprehended or reported as evading capture at the southern and northern borders, with both borders reporting record numbers of apprehensions and gothways. Escapees are foreign nationals who do not make it to ports of entry, do not file asylum or other immigration applications, and enter the United States illegally with the intent to evade capture by law enforcement. Most are not caught and law enforcement officers have no idea who or where they are.
It is the descents that law enforcement officials have raised concerns about, describing them mostly as single men of military age. They are described as people who enter the United States illegally between ports of entry with fentanyl and other drugs in backpacks and who traffic women and children.
While several Democrats in Washington, DC have claimed that 90% of the fentanyl trafficked across the southern border is seized at ports of entry, Border Patrol agents and state and local law enforcement seize fentanyl between ports of entry or several hundred miles from the border. refute this claim. In the border states of Southern California, Arizona, and Texas, law enforcement officers in unique operations not near ports of entry or the border have seized enough fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other drugs to kill towns, regions, and populations. whole.
With information from Bethany Blankley/The Center Square.
