America’s Heroin Epidemic Fueled By Flood Of Illegal Immigrants

...“Every single illegal alien that comes into the country goes through the hands of a drug cartel,” even if the [illegal alien] immigrant doesn’t want the help, said Hector Garza. He is president of the Laredo, Texas, chapter of the National Border Patrol Council.

Garza was briefly in the national spotlight earlier this year when Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump held a campaign event near the U.S. border with Mexico to highlight his demand for an end to illegal immigration. Garza’s chapter pulled out of hosting Donald Trump in Laredo just hours before the Republican presidential front-runner’s visit.

Most heroin is smuggled into the U.S. by illegal immigrants crossing the border with help from Mexican drug cartels, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. The cartels are also responsible for most of the violence in the border region.

“Most of the drugs coming into the country are not coming into the ports of entry,” he said. “Coming across the border is the easiest way. You cannot imagine how easy it is to cross the border. You would be shocked at how open our borders are down here.”...

“The price for being led across is carrying one of those backpacks,” Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge Adam Parks told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

In other words, curbing illegal immigration by securing the border would restrict the major method cartels use to smuggle heroin — a drug that’s causing an epidemic of suffering and criminal violence in the U.S. Deaths from the opiate nearly quadrupled from 2002 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

“Without the manpower on the border, we just can’t physically secure the border,” National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd told the committee...