Cartels Thriving In New Mexico After Checkpoint Shutdowns

There is a crisis at the border between New Mexico and Mexico, but the governor has turned a blind eye and, even worse, is in denial that there's even a crisis.

The New York Post reported:

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — In this sprawling desert city in the shadow of the Sacramento Mountains, local officials are fed up with the border crisis — and have gone rogue. 

Otero County last month became the first border community to declare a state of emergency after the federal government shut down two local checkpoints in the area, which had traditionally provided a second line of defense against shipments of drugs and illegal immigrants who managed to sneak through the border at El Paso, about 90 miles to the south. 

“It’s a green light for the cartels when border checkpoints are down,” Otero County Sheriff David Black, 56, told The Post. 

Black, who has lived in this city of nearly 32,000 people his whole life, said he has 44 “gun toters” overseeing the county’s 6,628 square miles of lonely ranchland and pistachio orchards nestled among national parkland and Holloman Air Force Base. 

Now the lawman said he has to deploy his own overworked forces to stop drugs such as methamphetamines, marijuana and fentanyl from coming through his territory, which is home to some 65,000 people. 

Otero County is undefended because US Customs and Border Protection shut down two inspection facilities on US Routes 54 and 70, Black said. The Border Protection agents were sent south to El Paso to help with the massive influx of migrants. More than 800 have been arriving per day at the border near El Paso, according to Border Protection statistics. 

In addition to the federal government’s shutdown of the checkpoints, New Mexico’s recently installed Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, withdrew 118 National Guard troops from the state’s southern boundary, in defiance of President Trump. Earlier this year, she called Trump’s policies at the Mexican border a “charade of border fear-mongering.” 

In the wake of the Border Protection withdrawal, Griffin and Black want the governor to redeploy the National Guard, and they are determined to sue the state if the governor continues to refuse to cooperate, Griffin said.

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