The Texas Public Policy Foundation reported March 21 the results of a recent survey conducted with Hispanic Texans, and it offered a clear message on border security.
“Like most Americans, Hispanic Texans care deeply about public safety and the quality of education for their kids and future generations,” said Rafa Bejar, TPPF’s director of outreach. “They see the crime and violence in their communities and the federal government’s unwillingness to respond to the border crisis. It’s no wonder that this is chief among their concerns.”
The poll surveyed 608 Hispanic adults from Feb. 14-23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.
Rafa Bejar of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
| Texas Public Policy Foundation
According to the survey, 73% believe there is a “crisis” at the Texas border and 51% want more to be done. More than 60% want more law enforcement and only 13% believe less should be done.
Selene Rodriguez, a TPPF policy scholar, wrote about this pressing concern for the foundation in January.
“Slavery is alive and well today all across the world, and it comes in the form of human trafficking,” Rodriguez wrote.
She noted that immigrants, and in particular women, are at high risk for being trafficked. She also noted that immigrant children that wind up in the foster care system wind up at higher risk of being sex trafficked due to lower levels of education, lack of community, and strained communication skills.
Rodriguez continued that President Joe Biden “has made it abundantly clear that his administration does not wish to stop illegal immigration, nor does it wish to enable necessary enforcement of the immigration laws that are on the books,” which she says risks the lives of millions.
She said it’s unknown how many victims of human trafficking have been smuggled across the border to date, but it is clear “scandalously loose border policies and inadequate federal resources incentivize innocent people to put themselves at the mercy of human smugglers, fueling human trafficking in the United States.”
“The vast majority of Hispanic Texans are hard-working, values-based Americans," Rodriguez added. "Many of us can say that our parents or grandparents fought hard to make it to this country the right way. We don’t believe in the reckless, irresponsible handouts and ‘free rides’ being given to hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring across the border each month, and that only serve to attract even more. We believe in working hard and earning your way. Nothing is free. Mass illegal immigration comes at a steep cost to all taxpaying Americans and is simply unsustainable."
She amplified her views during an interview with the Austin Journal.
“Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking,” Rodriguez said. “People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur in thousands of dollars of debt to make the trip. After entering the country illegally, these same people are often forced to pay off that debt through forced labor and sexual exploitation, which is the essence of the modern-day slavery that is human trafficking.
“The more lax America’s border policies are, the more likely people are to send their loved ones, or themselves, on the treacherous journey across the southern border," she added. "This has become an increasingly big business for the drug cartels, and thousands of their victims are falling prey to rape, abuse and even death along the way.”
The Lone Star Standard previously reported on a Meta policy that would allow users of its platforms to continue to solicit human smuggling services on its platforms.
According to the New York Post, the Latin American branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking In Women conducted a study that estimates 60% of Latin American children “who set out to cross the border alone or with smugglers have been caught by the cartels and are being abused in child pornography or drug trafficking.”
“Migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organizations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses — abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape — that can leave them injured and traumatized,” according to a 2017 report from Doctors without Borders. The same report also found that 31.4% of female migrants who traveled through Mexico into the United States had been sexually abused.
“Under the current administration, Border Patrol agents are now frequently finding young children, from babies to teenagers, abandoned in remote, desert areas, or fighting for their lives on a riverbank,” Rodriguez told the Austin Journal. “Children as young as 4 have been discovered dead floating in the Rio Grande, and [authorities are] unable to locate their parents or guardians. People are being routinely stuffed into all kinds of vehicles and left without food or water for days during transport.
"The reality is that those who are subjected to human trafficking end up enduring years of abuse and degradation leading to severe depression, anxiety, guilt, PTSD and are more likely to develop addictions to drugs and alcohol,” she added
She sees a clear path to shutting down this pipeline to misery.
“America needs to turn off the incentives and the magnet to illegal migration between ports of entry,” Rodriguez said. “This can be done in a number of ways, including by completely reestablishing the Migrant Protection Protocols, strictly limiting eligibility for asylum, ending catch and release, maintaining adequate detention capacities for violators of federal immigration law, enabling instead of hampering cooperation between federal and local law enforcement and fully funding and completing construction of former President Donald Trump’s modern border wall system.”