Gonzalez: Cartels have made $1.2 billion this year delivering migrants into United States Rio Grande Guardian's Podcast

MCALLEN, Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez says cartels in Mexico could have earned $1.2 billion this year through smuggling undocumented migrants into the United States. 
The McAllen Democrat arrived at this figure by multiplying 172,000, which is the number of migrants known to have crossed the southern border in the last three months, by $6,000, which is the going rate to get an undocumented immigrant into the United States. 
Gonzalez is urging the Biden Administration to process asylum seekers on the Mexico-Guatemala border. That way, he said, you “take cartels out of the equation.
Gonzalez recently took a bipartisan group of congress men and women, known as the Problem Solvers Caucus, to the southern border. He followed this up by quizzing Ricardo Zúñiga, special envoy for the Northern Triangle at the U.S. Department of State, during a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, Migration and International Economic Policy Subcommittee.
Another Biden official he questioned was Peter Natiello, deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, U.S. Agency for International Development. The hearing was titled, “Renewing the United States’ Commitment to Addressing the Root Causes of Migration from Central America.”
Gonzalez represents the 15th Congressional District of Texas, Part of the district is on the Texas-Mexico border.
“We do not have the resources to deal with 173,000 people who came mostly to my section of the border. It has really overwhelmed us and overwhelmed all our local capacity,” Gonzalez told the hearing.
“What I have advocated is to have the same system we have in my district in a very humane, clean, first-class American facility closer to them on the southern Mexico border or the Guatemala border.”
Gonzalez said he does not see an end in sight to the surge in migrants seeking asylum.
“We are talking about climate migration down the road and maybe other countries down the road. What are we doing in planning long term ideas to be able to help folks closer to home and have these processing centers and maybe refugee settlements, or whatever it is, to help this mass migration that is coming north, further south and to keep them from coming through Mexico? Gonzalez asked Zúñiga.
Gonzalez said he and a neighboring congressman calculated that, “just in the last 90 days, cartels have probably been enriched about $1.2 billion just from the migration that has occurred this year, at an average of $6,000 a head that they are charging.”
Gonzalez said the United States should have same migration processing procedures it has in his district in place in Mexico and/or Guatemala.
“Ultimately, I envisage actually having your asylum hearings in safe zones where we can ensure and guarantee their safety. I think we need to start having out of the box ideas or we are going to continue dealing with this on our southern border,” Gonzalez said.

Editor's Note: Go to the Rio Grande Guardian website to read the full story.

Editor's Note: The attached podcast features the news conference Rep. Gonzalez held with members of the Problem Solvers Caucus. It was held on the banks of the Rio Grande River at Anzalduas Park, in Mission, Texas. 
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