“A hundred certainly doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s not, but the countries they come from have [a] total inability to deal with it,” he said, naming Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Surinam and Venezuela, in particular.

With little military threats to the United States in his region, Kelly is a frequent advocate for helping law enforcement attack the network — and root causes — of illegal drug and human trafficking into the United States. People, he said, travel freely and “simply walk across borders” in some cases where there is little to stop them.

“It’s the old story of you gotta watch them,” he said. “The CIA, FBI and people like that do a really good job tracking the networks, but you know it only takes – look, there’s a lot of people coming and going, it only takes one to cause you problems.”