The video above features Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mini-documentary “Midnight At the Border,” in which he travels to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, to investigate the illegal immigration issue firsthand.
What he discovers, and reveals in this video, is a humanitarian crisis of shocking magnitude and a border security system crippled by politics and corruption. Along the way, Kennedy also gathers ideas for how to solve the problem.
“I witnessed this dystopian nightmare of this uncontrolled flow of desperate humanity crossing the border and converging here because of misbegotten policies by high leadership of the United States,” Kennedy says.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, some 1.7 million illegals flowed across the southern border into the U.S. in 2021, another 2.4 million in 2022, and nearly 1.8 million so far in 2023.1 2022 was an all-time record, and the total for 2023 will likely break it.
Biden Has Outsourced US Immigration to the Cartels
A major take-home from Kennedy’s exposé of the border crisis is that the Biden administration has effectively outsourced U.S. immigration to the cartels. Several cartels are in fact now fighting for supremacy.
According to Jonathan Lines, Yuma County, Arizona, supervisor for District 2, there have been 300 assassinations in the past 18 months, as the cartels fight for control of the human trafficking business.
On the night that Kennedy visited Yuma, some 150 people from all over the world crossed the border. And, as noted by Lines, that’s a new phenomenon. In the past, most of the border-jumpers came from Mexico and South America. Now, most of those entering the U.S. illegally are from China, Africa and Eastern Europe.
People are also coming from Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh. They’ve heard there’s no border control, so they make their way to Mexico first, and then cross over from there.
Some are here for asylum. Some are hoping for a better life — the “American dream” — not yet realizing that that dream is being actively undermined with each passing day. Some are hard-core criminals. None are vetted either way.
Once they’re on the U.S. side, FEMA pays to fly them wherever they want to go, anywhere in the United States. In other words, U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for this cartel-led invasion.
Biden’s 180 on the Border Wall
Ironically, in 2006, then-Sen. Biden supported the construction of 700 miles of border wall, 40 stories high, to prevent the influx of methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin from Mexico.
In a Q-and-A session at a Columbia, South Carolina, Rotary Club meeting (video above), Biden also said American employers must be punished for “knowingly violating the law” by hiring illegals. “Unless you do those two things,” he said, “all the rest is window dressing.”
But once he entered the Oval Office, he blocked the completion of the wall, begun under President Trump, and is now selling off $ 300 million’ worth of unused wall material for pennies on the dollar, in what the New York Post calls “an apparent end-run around pending legislation in Congress” aimed at forcing Biden to finish the wall.2
“The Finish It Act will make the feds use those materials on new wall construction — or hand the remaining stock over to states like Texas for use in their own border defense projects,” the New York Post writes.3
“Now, the Biden administration is rushing to get rid of the wall leftovers before the GOP-led House can pass a matching version of the bill and make it law, critics told The Post.
‘This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,’ Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the bill’s sponsor, told The Post — denouncing the move as ‘outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.’
‘Leaving the border open to terrorists while selling border security materials at a loss is Bidenomics in a nutshell,’ said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a co-sponsor.
‘The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration,’ railed Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) called the fire sale ‘reckless.’ ‘Our borders continue to be overrun by an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants, turning every district into a border district, and compromising our national security,’ Stefanik said …
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), who represents the border district where the auctioned wall components have been sitting idle, slammed Biden for his ‘refusal to act.’
‘The federal government needs to be utilizing every tool in the toolbox to secure our border,’ Ciscomani said. ‘Instead of putting these materials to their intended use, they have been squandered, first collecting dust in the desert and now being auctioned off.’”
Open Border Policy Is the Antithesis of Humanitarianism
Those who argue that an open border policy is somehow a humanitarian policy clearly do not understand how this policy works and impacts people in the real world. Migrants face violence, sexual assault, extortion and robbery along their journey.
An unknown number of children are also being trafficked into the U.S. and sold into slavery and the sex trade. The estimated revenues from human trafficking in 2022 alone was $ 13 billion.4
The uncontrolled influx of illegals also puts an enormous strain on local communities, all of which have limited resources. In New York City, for example, more than 10,000 illegal migrants arrive each month, demanding shelter, meals, social services and education.5,6
In May 2023, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced that nearly half of all NYC hotel rooms were occupied by illegal immigrants,7 and according to news reports, rooms were being trashed in “free-for-alls” involving drugs, sex and violence.8,9,10
The city is reportedly reimbursing hotels more than $ 300 a night per room,11 and taxpayers are, of course, paying for that too, while the city is slashing services in an effort to balance the budget.
In July, migrants started setting up a tent city under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,12 and in mid-August, a tent city large enough to shelter 1,000 people was set up on the grounds of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.13
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-SI/Brooklyn, who is trying to prevent migrant shelters from being erected in the city’s parks and military sites, told the New York Post,14 “President Biden has no regard for taxpayer dollars — or how his open border is bankrupting communities across the country that are footing the bill for his failures.”
Lack of work, housing and food, in turn, end up fueling crime and make American communities less safe and more inhospitable.15
Open Border Policy Enables Human Trafficking and Slavery
The trafficking of children is perhaps the most disturbing part of this crisis. As of April 2023, the U.S. Office of Refugee Settlement had lost track of a staggering 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children who entered the U.S. in the previous two years.16 Where are they? What happened to them? Who has them?
As Yuma County Sheriff L.N. Wilmot told Kennedy, children are being exploited because of this open border policy, and there is absolutely nothing humane about that. Sponsors or recipients of these children are not even vetted to make sure the children are not being funneled directly into some pedophile ring or illicit business.
Many migrants also die along the way. According to Jeff Ruby, director and security officer of the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, the annual average of dead migrants found on the Western Barry Goldwater Range, which is right next to the border, was between five and 15. In 2022, there were 50 — the highest ever.
Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls explains how the cartels will intentionally direct large groups of migrants to make this treacherous multiday journey through the desert to distract border patrol from drug smugglers making their way to the border using another route.
In 2022 alone, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized 379 million doses of fentanyl being smuggled across the border. Cartels also use this diversion technique when smuggling in gang members and terrorists.
Illegal Migrant City Being Erected in Texas
To learn more about the reality at the southern border, check out the work of war correspondent and former Green Beret Michael Yon on cis.org, X/Twitter and Substack. Yon has spent the better part of this year investigating, recording and reporting on the border crisis.
Yon is one of the few who is reporting on the private construction of a 55,000-acre “Colonia” (colony) to house 200,000 illegals near Plum Grove, Texas.17,18 He discusses this in the Redacted interview above.
Yon’s investigation has also revealed that the U.S. government and the United Nations are funding, facilitating and encouraging the illegal immigration, handing out rape kits and maps showing the best routes and crossing areas.
How to Solve This Humanitarian Crisis
Can a President solve this problem and put an end to this humanitarian crisis? Absolutely. Key solutions gathered by Kennedy include:
- Finish key sections of the border wall
- Technology to secure the border and aid in border agent response to illegal incursions
- A legal pathway for asylum seekers
Kennedy envisions an immigration policy of “tall walls and wide gates.” Meaning, illegal border crossings are eliminated, while those who want to come here have a legal and expeditious way to seek and be granted work permits, residency or citizenship. In closing, Kennedy says:
“I’ve come to understand that the open border policy is just a way of funding a multi-billion dollar drug and human trafficking operation for the Mexican drug cartels.
When I’m president, I will secure the border, which will end the cartels’ drug-trafficking economy, and I will build wide doors for those who wish to enter legally so that the United States can continue to be a beacon to the world …”