on how the border wall has been a money maker for cartels: 1) When I joined the Border Patrol in 1995, the 1st wall was being built in San Diego county. It was just getting to our patrol area in the mountains east of the city in Campo where I worked.

2) The only border marker was a barbed wire fence. The cartel was not much into smuggling migrants across the border back then. Guides generally worked with smugglers who met groups once they hiked through the mountains and then charged them for helping them get further north.

3) Once the 1st wall was built and San Diego became flooded with agents, it pushed migrants out to the mountains. This was done on purpose. Then commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Services Doris Meissner stated that they wanted to force migrants to cross in the

4) mountains and deserts. It would be physically harder and give the agents more time to track them down. What it did was increase the body counts. What it also did was make smuggling way more expensive. Before the wall, migrants said they paid anywhere from $400-$700 depending

5) on their destination. Today, migrants can pay $10,000. The more you pay, the easier it is to cross. And yes, there is an entire elite level of smuggling. If you have the money, you can have that access. This made it more attractive to the cartel. They now control who crosses

6) and where. If you have little money, you cross in the dangerous mountains and deserts. If you have a lot, you can be smuggled through the ports with CBP help. It was the wall that made it more expensive, which then made it more organized which brought in the cartels.

7) Walls are a false sense of security. They simply increased demand from organized crime who was more than willing to meet that demand for a price. This in turn increases corruption. The walls did not stop migration, they just created a new source of income for cartels.