Aff - PF Starter Packet - Houston 2024

***Houston HDW Public Forum Starter Packet – Affirmative***
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Cartel Trafficking ADV---AC
Our Sole Contention is Cartel Trafficking.
Cartels are gaining massive profits from coupling drug trafficking with human trafficking — smugglers currently operate in a low-risk, high-reward, environment — enhanced border security is essential to curtail growing smuggling.
Schoeberl 24 — [Richard Schoeberl, Ph.D., has over 30 years of law enforcement experience, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He has served in a variety of positions throughout his career, ranging from a supervisory special agent at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, DC, to unit chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section at the NCTC’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Before these organizations, he worked as a special agent investigating violent crime, human trafficking, international terrorism, and organized crime. Additionally, he has authored numerous scholarly articles, serves as a peer mentor with the Police Executive Research Forum, is currently a professor of Criminology and Homeland Security at the University of Tennessee-Southern, and works with Hope for Justice – a global nonprofit combating human trafficking. “The nexus between drug trafficking and human trafficking” https://hopeforjustice.org/news/the-nexus-between-drug-trafficking-and-human-trafficking/ ]
Writing in the journal Domestic Preparedness using evidence from recent Hope for Justice investigations and case-work, and their own long backgrounds in law enforcement and intelligence, they explain: “The diversification into human smuggling and trafficking is a simple business decision for [the crime groups] who have no regard for human life and make no distinction between drugs and human commodities.
“Profits effectively triple with minimal effort while providing an endless supply of personnel and diversified illicit business opportunities should the narcotics trade become disrupted. With money as a prime motivation for these illegal activities, transnational crime is likely to increase until authorities challenge the high-profit, low-risk paradigm.”
The authors, Richard Schoeberl, Jeff Bollettieri and Bill Loucks, call for new legislation and more training for law enforcement.
Article copied below courtesy Domestic Preparedness journal: JUNE 5, 2024 The profitability of human trafficking and drug trafficking makes them a desirable pairing for transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) seeking to increase profits and market control. The International Labour Organization estimated that human trafficking was a $236 billion-a-year business in 2021. Actual illegal drug trade profits are largely unknown due to the trade’s illicit nature. However, a 2014 report from Global Financial Integrity, a Washington, DC-based think tank focusing on illicit financial flows, corruption, illicit trade, and money laundering, has estimated the global illegal drug market between $426 and $652 billion.
Human trafficking and smuggling are complex crimes that affect people differently. While sometimes related, these are separate crimes. Emerging research suggests that disasters, like the border crisis, increase the risk of human trafficking. Numerous factors drive migration, including natural disasters, regional conflicts, poverty, political instability, human rights violations, and fluctuating immigration policies.
Although the responsibility for immigration policy and enforcement lies with the federal government, state and local governments shoulder the burden for the stabilization of migrants remaining in the U.S. as they await immigration proceedings. State and local government efforts will be chiefly coordinated by emergency management personnel utilizing tactics similar to those for natural and human-caused disasters. They will assist social services agencies and their non-profit partners to quickly mobilize emergency migrant-serving facilities, programs, and services. Aside from the humanitarian lens, the policing lens has agencies shifting their “safeguarding” focus of respective communities to combat spillover violence associated with the border crisis:
According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Wray at a March 2024 congressional hearing, “I would say this from an FBI perspective: we are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border, and that includes drug trafficking. The FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people.”
In March 2024, U.S. Border Patrol chief Jason Owens stated that the extraordinary flow of people into the U.S. is mainly driven by cartels, and they were setting “the rules of engagement” at the southern border.
Aside from illicit drug trafficking, Mexican TCOs are aggressively increasing their involvement in corresponding crimes like extortion, human smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking, and oil theft, according to the Congressional Research Service. Additionally, the level of violence associated with territorial control, trafficking routes, and criminal influence is increasing. According to the Global Risk Map, Mexico remains at “high risk,” crediting the enduring narco-war that threatens the balance of power and fuels upticks in violence. Over the past few decades, Mexican TCOs have fragmented the seven original Mexican cartels into twelve. In addition to large TCOs, approximately 200-400 smaller criminal organizations operate in Mexico.
The fragmentation and evolution of criminal enterprises did not happen instantaneously. In 2018, instead of directly combating TCOs, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador adopted a policy addressing social conditions within the country, allowing these organizations to flourish. Unlike Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, where dismantling the Medellin and Cali cartels led to less violence overall, dismantling the Mexican TCOs has fragmented criminal groups and encouraged widespread violence, largely due to Mexico’s governmental corruption and lack of enforcement.
TCOs continue to be the greatest ongoing drug threat to the U.S., according to the DEA. Mexican TCOs control a majority of the U.S. illicit drug market, have well-established transportation routes, possess advanced technological and communication capabilities, and have strong affiliations with criminal groups inside the U.S. Their routine participation and involvement with affiliated crimes such as human smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking, public corruption, and violence pose a serious threat to homeland security and further jeopardize public safety. The TCOs’ production and trafficking of fentanyl to the U.S. has fueled a continuing opioid crisis. The DEA reported that fentanyl was responsible for the deaths of 74,225 Americans in 2022 and almost 38,000 Americans in the first six months of 2023, making it the deadliest U.S. drug threat.
TCOs currently control transportation routes inside Mexico, smuggling corridors, and distribution hubs in every U.S. state, as well as synthetic drug manufacturing facilities. Encrypted messaging applications and social media platforms facilitate these drug sales, making detection more challenging for law enforcement. TCOs can advertise drugs and cross-border human-smuggling services over social media platforms, communicate with co-conspirators and drug purchasers over encrypted applications, and receive payment via cash apps and cryptocurrency platforms on a single electronic mobile device.
Transnational human trafficking
The overwhelming number of undocumented, illegal migrants entering the U.S. is alarming. In 2023, Customs Border Patrol reported over 2.4 million encounters at the Southwest border and 3.2 million encounters nationwide. TCO violence and corruption, coupled with inadequate U.S. immigration policies and enforcement, have increased the number of asylum seekers entering the country. According to a 2022 report by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, the Mexico to U.S. corridor is the largest in the world, with nearly 11 million people fleeing violence, extortion, armed clashes, or organized crime groups. Conflicts and competition for control between TCOs in violent states and battlegrounds – expanding into formerly peaceful areas – fuel a large exodus of people. Smugglers are capitalizing on opportunities for diversification and exploitation.
Recruiting And transport
Common human trafficking recruitment methods include familial relationships, smuggling, and migration, specifically targeting migrants who originate in or pass through Mexico en route to the U.S. Migrants often have preexisting vulnerabilities and are unlikely to report trafficking crimes to law enforcement for reasons including the lack of self-identification, TCO retribution, deportation, and arrest. TCOs control the 2,000-mile U.S. Mexico-U.S. border which has escalated violent competition between groups over illicit markets and trafficking routes. The smugglers, often known as “foot guides,” “coyotes,” or “polleros,” recruit victims with promises of safe passage. Sometimes, victims are kidnapped en route to their destination and controlled with debt bondage, physical violence, and threats to family members.
Smuggling endeavors are highly sophisticated. In 2021, TCOs earned an estimated $13 billion from human smuggling. Migrants agree to pay TCOs to travel from Southern or Central America to the U.S. Before the journey occurs, TCOs do the equivalent of a background check to learn about the migrants’ family members and friends and where they live. The family members or friends become “collateral” for the migrants. When the journey begins, TCOs require migrants to wear color-coded and serial-numbered wristbands that reflect how much money is outstanding and who they may have to work for once inside the U.S.
During the trip, TCOs often increase the price or “piso” (tax), making it difficult for migrants to back out of deals or negotiate lower fees. Most migrants have some money, but not always enough to pay for the entire journey, with smuggling rates ranging from $3,000 to $60,000. At the border, TCOs remove the migrants’ wristbands and collect any remaining piso and smuggling fees. Migrants refusing to pay risk having someone kill their family members or friends. Any migrant who owes money must go to a work location in the U.S., where the migrant stays enslaved in debt bondage to the trafficker until the full amount is paid.
Forced labor in the U.S.
Once in the U.S., large percentages of undocumented illegal migrants smuggled into the U.S. from TCOs fall prey to labor trafficking, which expands beyond laboring on a farm, cleaning hotels, doing construction, or working in factories for little or no wages. According to research conducted by one of the nation’s leading anti-trafficking organizations, Polaris, the National Human Trafficking Hotline identified that, between 2015-2018, 50% of persons trafficked for labor were from Latin America. Agriculture has the distinction of being the U.S. industry with the greatest number of reported immigrant victims of human trafficking.
Latin American migrants are not the only victims of the gateway from smuggling to trafficking. Labor trafficking also occurs at legal and illegal marijuana farms, which may be operated by TCOs or Asian Criminal Organizations with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, who also function as money launderers. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, encounters with Chinese nationals have significantly increased over the past four years: 450 in FY2021, 2,176 in FY2022, 24,314 in FY2023, and 27,700 in the first 7 months of FY2024.
Expanding beyond drug trafficking
Capitalizing on their existing drug routes, TCOs have expanded and diversified into human smuggling and, subsequently, human trafficking. Targeting migrants desperate to enter the U.S. and escape violence and economic poverty in their own countries, TCOs offer struggling migrants paid unauthorized transportation. Many migrants cannot pay the transportation cost and become the TCOs’ indentured servants. Repayment for this service takes many forms, primarily sex trafficking, labor trafficking, drug smuggling, and other associated criminal activity. Refusal to comply with TCO demands for trade-based repayment often means violence to migrants or their family members who remained in the country.
The US is in a surveillance arms-race — cartels are outpacing US systems to evade border protection.
Taylor 23 — [Nuray Taylor is a graduate of the University of Houston. Her background is in public relations and she is writing as a defense journalist. “New Tools Protect Increasingly Complicated Border.” https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/technology/new-tools-protect-increasingly-complicated-border ]
The U.S.-Mexico border poses a growing security challenge, including an evolution toward cartel-waged electronic warfare, that demands new technological capabilities, experts say.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is quickly adopting various innovations to enhance its enforcement.
“CBP is surging resources and increasing efficiency, prioritizing smart border security solutions, making historic investments in technology, taking the fight to cartels and smugglers and doing more with our regional partners than ever before through a combination of technology, infrastructure, personnel and other enforcement solutions to ensure our border remains secure,” a CBP spokesperson told SIGNAL Media.
The large investment in border technologies saved over 70,000 hours of agent time, the CBP claimed.
Among the new initiatives, one seeks to make the presence of CBP officers less predictable to potential offenders.
“We have a program that we were awarded called ARST, which is Autonomous Relocatable Surveillance Tower,” said Mike Powell, director of business development innovation solutions at Elbit Systems of America, a company that supplies a variety of border surveillance technologies.
Powell described the CBP’s latest program as an attempt to address evolving challenges. Currently, human smugglers and drug traffickers move away from towers and toward areas with little or no surveillance. Therefore, mobile platforms are the next step in the cat-and-mouse encounters.
“The concrete reality is that there are thousands of people who cross the border, the U.S. and Mexico border,” said Karine Côté-Boucher, associate professor of criminology at the University of Montreal.
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New Tools Protect Increasingly Complicated Border | AFCEA International https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/technology/new-tools-protect-increasingly-complicated-border
In 2022, the CBP encountered 2,378,944 migrants at the southwest land border. This number includes single adults, individuals in a family unit, accompanied minors and unaccompanied children.
The CBP figure represents 0.85% of the world’s total of 281 million migrants, according to the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration.
“On a global scale, what’s happening in the U.S. is not that big,” said Côté-Boucher, speaking about worldwide immigration. Nevertheless, the problem at the border is larger than immigration.
In 2022, 288,000 pounds of drugs were seized at the southwest land border, giving traffickers an opportunity to hide in lawful traffic and migration, according to the same agency.
The 2023 government budget is allocating $15.3 billion for the CBP and $8.1 billion to immigration law enforcement. These figures include $309 million for border security technology.
Barriers and facilities populate the area between both countries, and technologies are an increasingly important piece of the enforcement puzzle.
There are two main sources of experience when deploying new tools in this area. One comes from adapted U.S. armed services technology and the other comes from the Gaza-Israeli border. Terrorists’ attack methods are comparable to those employed by criminals trying to smuggle substances into the United States.
Meanwhile, innovations once reserved for warfighters find a space along the line that separates the two countries.
“Where we become a lot more valuable is when you do [surveillance] and [transport], we can do a gimbal and have surveillance, but we can also have a drop mechanism to where we can supply, either troops or people in the field, with any type of supplies that they might need,” said Jason Wright, senior program manager, Small Unmanned Aerial Division at AeroVironment.
Deploying new surveillance technologies is essential to getting ahead of the cartels.
Sadulski 21 — [Dr. Jarrod Sadulski is an associate professor at American Military University. He has over 22 years’ experience in the field of homeland security. Jarrod has engaged in speaking engagements in the United States, Europe, and Central America on the topic of human trafficking, counter terrorism, police responses to domestic terrorism, and police stress management. “Utilizing Technology to Better Secure the Southwest Border.”
https://amuedge.com/utilizing-technology-to-better-secure-the-southwest-border/ ]
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), drug traffickers also move contraband across the border using drones and other unmanned aircraft systems. Another method is to use compressed air cannons to launch bundles of drugs to awaiting vehicles on the other side of the fencing. The CRS says traffickers cut holes in barriers, and use vessels to move drugs offshore into the Pacific and then across the southwest border. They also move drugs across land areas where there are no constructed barriers.
Ninety Percent of Illegal Mexican Migrants Are Assisted into the US by Professional Smugglers
Smugglers are also responsible for bringing undocumented migrants across the southwest border illegally. The United Nations Office on Drug Control says 90% of illegal Mexican migrants are assisted by professional smugglers and 97% of the illegal migrants come over the southwest border.
[Podcast: How Will Biden’s Border Security Policies Differ from Trump’s?]
The UN Office on Drug Control adds that smuggled migrants are commonly collected in stash houses before making the crossing. Once in the United States the illegal migrants or their families normally must pay the remainder of the smuggling fee. Delaying final payment until the crossing is complete ensures that the migrants are not dumped off in the desert somewhere to die. However, this practice effectively transforms the migrants into hostages, a very dangerous situation for them.
Considering these problems, Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies are charged with the enormous responsibility of securing the border from drug trafficking and human smuggling. For years, Border Patrol agents have patrolled the southwest border relying on personal knowledge, instincts, and luck. According to Border Patrol Operations Officer Joseph Korchmaros, “We usually had to do our jobs without a lot of information.”
However, technology has greatly improved to secure the southwest border. Combining radars and cameras has been helpful because radars can track movement while cameras enable agents to see who is moving.
Utilizing Technology Is Essential to Provide Real-Time Intelligence to Agents in the Field
Utilizing technology is essential to provide real-time intelligence to agents in the field regarding the number of people moving along the border, whether they appear to be carrying drugs, and even if they are armed. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using a wide array of technology depending on the location. That may include 120-foot-high towers with surveillance equipment to scaled down radar and camera equipment to give Border Patrol agents mobility on the ground. For example, high-definition cameras along the border area of Nogales focus on the 20-foot high barrier betwe

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