I’d like to test a thesis about the southwest border of the United States. It is complex, but necessarily so.
This is the first step: The international reflex to the open southwest border of the United States—a deliberate, systematic effort to attract emigrants for resettlement in this country—includes . . .
- drug trafficking and mass murder by overdose;
- sex trafficking and rape on massive scale;
- child abandonment and molestation;
- financial exploitation of the innocent at large;
- and aggravated assault and murder by coyotes and militarized cartels.
In view of these crimes, I believe The federal government’s refusal to preserve the integrity of the border implicates it in crimes against humanity.
These crimes match some of those listed by The International Criminal Court as crimes against humanity:
“For the purpose of this Statute [The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court], ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
1. Murder;2. Extermination;
3. Enslavement;
4. Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
5. Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
6. Torture;
7. Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
8. Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
9. Enforced disappearance of persons;
10. The crime of apartheid;
11. Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”
Of the crimes listed above, those described at 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 occur on mass scale among migrants.
The documented crimes against migrants en route to the United States are particularly heinous, and the record of offenses is long. Here, in the following list, are just some of the documented crimes:
Simple assault:
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-announces-results-latest-operations-targeting-criminal-aliens
https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/central-america/easy-prey-criminal-violence-and-central-american-migration
Aggravated assault:
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-issues-voice-most-wanted-fugitives-listSexual assault
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/11/01/myth-vs-fact-caravan
Aggravated sexual assault:
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-publishes-monthly-report-enforcement-actions-due-cooperative-agreements-1
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190821142712.htm
Child molestation and rape:
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/2021-records-highest-ever-number-migrant-children-crossing-darien-jungle-towards-usChild rape
Child abandonment and death:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/01/1056202
Rape of female adults:
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/23/293449153/the-rarely-told-stories-of-sexual-assault-against-female-migrants
Aggravated serial rape and murder:
https://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/migrant-smuggling.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55829429
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rapes-of-u-s-bound-migrants-make-a-treacherous-route-even-more-dangerous-11630956539
Sex trafficking and Sex slavery:
“Contemporary Violence and the Broader Context in Mexico,” p. 16, in Mexico is Not Colombia. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt6wq9m8
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/29/737268821/human-trafficking-and-the-southern-border
Suicide:
(https://www.aimspress.com/article/doi/10.3934/publichealth.202103).
You'll find examples that typify offenses against women in an article titled, "You Have to Pay With Your Body"
The match between anecdotal accounts, documented instances, and the list of crimes enumerated by the International Criminal Court suggests that the United States is at least implicated in crimes against humanity.
That is my thesis, but the evidence for it is far more extensive than I have been able to share.
Readers might object that the open border isn’t the cause of these abuses. Migrants brave the dangers by choice. How could a nation be implicated in crimes against them?
Consider: people come now in greater numbers than in the previous several years.
In January 2022, there were about 160,000 known crossings. That is twice as many as in January 2021, and four times as many as in January 2020.
Migrants now come, like filings to a magnet.
The analogy is apt, and most who watch with open eyes know it is. They come because the border is kept open by criminal neglect.
If the border were secure, would as many migrants come?
No.
The argument from diminished effect is compelling.
My thesis that the border causes crimes gets fairly strong support from it.
Grant, then, if you will, that the open border causes international damage to the vulnerable on massive scale. Then grant that the open border represents a deliberate, systematic effort by the federal government to lure these people to risk the dangerous journey to America. These predicates present a strong presumption of criminal activity by the federal government.
Systematic, deliberate, coordinated actions carried out by a nation contravene the Rome Statute and can be investigated by the I.C.C. Although the scope of the ICC’s jurisdiction is still debated, the following statement is relevant:
"Under Article 12 of the Rome Statute the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over any alleged conduct only if there is a nexus between such conduct and the State where the crime was committed or the State of the accused person's nationality, and only if one of these States is a party to the Rome Statute.
The implications on the US side of the border are serious, as well.
Customs and Border Patrol now serves as unwilling concierge for migrants at the border rather than as protector of its integrity. They serve the humane, but nevertheless inappropriate purpose, of helping the dislocated and helpless people they face by the thousands.
They do not do this by choice; their professional obligation and their heartfelt duty is to the territorial sovereignty of the United States. But Covid and mandated vaccines—refuse them and you lose your job—have so reduced their number that they are overrun, reduced to a small number of agents who move migrants from the border to buses that take them to planes under federal contract, that then take them to the interior of the United States. Now, to add injury to insult, border agents are under the threat of assassination by cartels.
Emigration has happened in waves before. The largest waves in a better time ended at Ellis Island and other legal ports of entry. They took on the burden of acculturation and naturalization. They became citizens.
Now sidestepped, naturalization goes by the wayside, and the people coming to this country now do not enter aware of or faithful to the ideas that shaped America.
Acculturation does not begin. What begins instead is attrition of the proportion of US citizens still loyal to America’s forms of social organization and political order.
The crimes that occur on both sides of the border, and under the aegis of both political parties, deteriorate life on the US side, in towns and states that suffer the effects of additional crimes:
- Drug trafficking resulting in mass deaths in the United States (100,000 deaths by fentanyl overdose since the beginning of 2022);
- Human trafficking that results in the mass exploitation of state resources;
- Trespassing and property crimes on the US side;
- Vandalism, trashing of properties along the Rio Grande;
- Intimidation of border families;
- Theft from border families;
- Displacement of labor by bona fide citizens in the United States
- Disenfranchisement of duly eligible voters (800,000 non-citizens given the vote in New York State;
Non-citizens usurp the rights, resources, and prerogatives of bona fide citizens, with:
- The mass misuse of taxpayer funds at the state, federal, and local levels;
- The disregard of taxpayer prerogatives in the uses of tax revenue;
- The misuse of Customs and Border Patrol;
- The abuse of law enforcement in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California;
- The misuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The human and dollar cost here and across the world is immense.
I believe that the cis-global effects amount to abuses that cry out against the United States. There is shame in this. But the federal government conducts its border affairs without shame.
If my words seem like rhetoric, you might dismiss them.
But if, on the contrary, you’ve been moved to concern, or to strong convictions that the federal government is abusing its vast powers, then you should act.
The open border is a form of criminal neglect. Moreover, as the federal government enlarges its bureaucracy, it uses that extended power to support a program of illegal emigration and resettlement funded by taxpayers.
Money and manpower that should maintain integrity at the border are wrenched away from their proper functions. The government neglects enforcement of laws securing territorial integrity and uses the Centers for Disease Control to weaken Customs and Border Patrol. One agency gets pitted against another. That kind of overreach is both intentional and irrational.
While none of us can bring about an investigation of the federal government in view of these crimes, some of us can act to curtail them.
Article V of the US Constitution endows the states with the prerogative of posing amendments to stop the abuses.
An amendment that imposes spending constraints can curb the misuse of border personnel and stop the misuse of fiscal resources.
With term limits, the unelected federal officials who corrupt their agencies would be replaced periodically, disrupting abuse, especially with terms staggered between general elections.
Finally, the jurisdiction of the federal government, which lengthens its bureaucratic reach by accommodating illegal migrants with taxpayer money, should be defined and limited.
An Article V Convention seeks amendments specifically intended to limit the jurisdiction and spending of the federal government, and to set term limits for all federal officers.
Please, seek out information about The Convention of States and its efforts to abridge the power, spending, and jurisdiction of the federal government.
You can find the link here: https://conventionofstates.com
