Sheriff A.J. Louderback, a five-term sheriff in Jackson County, Texas is saying that Americans will “pay a price” for the chaos on the southern border. Louderback claims a historical first is taking place – the Biden administration is asking rejected asylee applicants to reapply.

Government employees are contacting rejected asylee applicants to encourage them to reapply. This has never happened before in previous administrations. Asylum seekers from as recently as the last year or so are being sought out by the Biden administration. This news is really quite astonishing. The Epoch Times interviewed Louderback. Jackson County is directly affected by human smuggling activity through the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor on the border for illegal crossings.

Not only is the sheriff pointing out the misguided practice being carried out of asking for reapplications during a time of a crisis at the border, something that Open Borders Joe refers to as “a challenge”, but he also warns about the increase in human trafficking and activity of drug cartels. Drug cartels are profiting handsomely on the backs of poor migrants. Cartels exploit human suffering for profit.

He then warned the American public that they haven’t been told the truth about the wide-ranging impacts that such a flow of illegal immigrants has on the communities they pass through and settle in.

He noted that the flow of people brings money and power that enriches cartels that claim territory (plazas) adjacent to the border through which their coyotes can charge passage. Such cartels are also known to smuggle narcotics and weapons across the border.

“If you want access to the border through the plazas, you will pay what’s called a peso to the Gulf Cartel in this area, and that peso averages at a low of about $250 per person. So [at] 1,000 [people crossing] a day, you’re looking at a quarter million dollars a day coming in and funding the cartel for its future violence, and the future enhancement of all things criminal that go on here in Texas … in the United States,” Louderback said.

And Biden’s policies are helping funnel people into this illegal trade, he added. “We’re allowing the cartels to fund themselves, enrich themselves at the cost of these people.”

Most asylum claims are rejected. Typically, the reason for illegal migrants to make the journey is for a better way of life. An opportunity for a better living is not a legitimate reason to be granted asylum. Prosecution of a country’s citizens is a basis for asylum but not simply seeking a job. Violence and insecurity are not reasons for asylum, either. The United States is not a violence-free country. Many migrants end up at the mercy of cartels. They have no contacts in the United States, no family, and no place to go once they get here. Cartels take advantage of that. The chaos provides human suffering and a national security issue. A sovereign country has to have a secure border.

“You know, in a likely situation where you have a mass of people who come into a community, fresh and new, not knowing anybody or knowing very few people, what’s going to happen with them? Many of them are going to be indentured to the cartel.

“So we’re bringing in people here wholesale into this country and clearly, we’ve delivered a message to the world that our borders are open today. And Texans will pay a price, Americans will pay a price for that.”

“Having a secure border defines us as a country,” the sheriff said. “I think people need to pay attention to that.”

Sleepy Joe is busy dismantling Trump’s immigration policies. Trump’s policies, though, were successful, including the Remain in Mexico agreement with that country. Central American countries also agreed to Trump’s requests that they take those who were illegally crossing the border. Last week Trump issued a statement that criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border and executive actions on immigration. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded during a briefing that the Biden administration doesn’t take advice from Trump.

“We don’t take our advice or counsel from former President Trump on immigration policy, which was not only inhumane but ineffective over the last four years,” Psaki said. “We’re going to chart our own path forward, and that includes treating children with humanity and respect.”

That’s too bad. The Biden administration could learn from what worked for the benefit of the United States and its neighbors to the south from Trump’s time in office. Instead, Biden is busy relabeling migrant detention facilities and hoping that warm and fuzzy words will take some of the pressure off his administration to get the crisis under control. Senator Tom Cotton is often named as a potential presidential candidate in 2024. He said that the Biden administration has created this mess and now wants to treat detention centers as “welcoming centers”. He made the remark during an interview on Fox and Friends this morning.

“This is a border crisis. This is the Biden border crisis. But you know if you’re Joe Biden and the Democrats and they don’t believe in borders, they don’t, therefore, think it is a crisis. They think this is a feature not a bug of their policy. They’ve literally turned detention centers – that are designed to turn people away at our borders- into reception centers. That’s what they’re gonna call them. What signal is that going to send? We’ve seen migrants wearing their shirts that say, Biden, let us in…

All this is going to do is it’s going to build more and more pressure at the border as more and more people make the very dangerous journey across Mexico to get into our country. And how is this the moral and virtuous thing to do? The Biden administration is essentially saying if you’re willing to make that long, dangerous journey, if you’re willing to put your life at risk or your kids’ life at risk, we’ll put you in…

Cotton rightly calls it a border crisis of Biden’s own making. Biden is only now sending a team to assess the situation. Why didn’t he do that before he began issuing executive actions to dismantle the policies already in place? Biden isn’t interested in good policy, only scoring political points with the far left of the Democrat Party.