Was recently installed White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s stance on human trafficking and drug cartels a factor in President Trump’s decision to promote the man originally picked to head up Homeland Security?
In a revealing 2014 interview, the retired 4-star US Marine Corps general told PRISM magazine that the ‘most concerning’ threat facing the United States comes from international criminal networks trafficking in drugs and sex workers:
These are international criminal networks – everything gets in. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of illicit narcotics. Relatively small amounts are taken out of the flow by our border controls. Tens of thousands of sex workers, in many cases adolescents, come into the United States every year through these networks to serve the sex industry. I spoke at a human rights conference at the University of South Florida, in Tampa. The audience was shocked when I talked about sex workers. –Gen John Kelly
Speaking Trump’s language
Upon taking office, President Trump made the fight against human trafficking and pedophilia a top priority for his administration – kicked off by a human trafficking awareness ad released in early February by the Department of Homeland Security (headed by… General Kelly, 67).
Wow, new DHS / ICE Human Trafficking vid opens with a #Pizzagate ref: "The signs are there, sometimes you just have to take a second look" pic.twitter.com/DgatsUnWzq
— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) February 5, 2017
That was only the beginning. Five days later on February 9, Trump signed an Executive Order to combat human trafficking (“Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking”).
Then in late February, Trump told a room of advisors and representatives from anti-trafficking organizations that he vowed to fight the ‘epidemic’ of human trafficking, promising to bring the ‘full force and weight‘ of the U.S. government to address the problem. Of note, a record 1500+ arrests of pedophiles or sex traffickers were made during Trump’s first month in office.
Trump vows to fight 'epidemic' of human trafficking https://t.co/oDLZ2NdrtA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2017
And in a June speech at a launch ceremony for the State Department’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, Ivanka Trump said that ending human trafficking is in our ‘moral and strategic interests,’ and a top White House priority.
“Ending human trafficking is a major foreign policy priority of the Trump administration,” -Ivanka Trump
Finally, last Friday, President Trump told a group of law enforcement officials on New York that human trafficking is possibly worse ‘than it’s ever been in the history of the world.’
You go back 1,000 years, where you think of human trafficking, you go back 500 years, 200 years, 100 years, human trafficking, they say — think of it, what they do — human trafficking is worse now, maybe, than it’s ever been in the history of this world. -Donald Trump
In 2004, the State Department estimated between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across an international border each year – of which 70 percent are thought to be female, and 50 percent minors. According to the Daily Caller: The Polaris Project, a human trafficking-focused NGO, estimates that the issue of human trafficking in the U.S. is getting worse. From 2015 to 2016, reported human trafficking cases jumped by 35 percent; reports of labor trafficking, in particular, jumped by 47 percent from 2015 to 2016.
MS-13
Trump’s February Executive Order was aimed at international cartels dealing in both drugs and human trafficking – and MS-13 has been singled out as a primary threat.
These groups are drivers of crime, corruption, violence, and misery. In particular, the trafficking by cartels of controlled substances has triggered a resurgence in deadly drug abuse and a corresponding rise in violent crime related to drugs. Likewise, the trafficking and smuggling of human beings by transnational criminal groups risks creating a humanitarian crisis.
The weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama Admin. allowed bad MS 13 gangs to form in cities across U.S. We are removing them fast!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2017
In addition to AG Jeff Sessions targeting MS-13 last month, Trump vowed to ‘destroy the vile criminal cartel’ during last Friday’s speech to law enforcement professionals. “[MS-13 has] transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields,” Trump said. “They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a society the spilling of innocent, young, wonderful vibrant people”
For a brief look into the gang, Tucker Carlson recently traveled to El Salvador for his week-long series “Hunting MS-13,” which includes an interview with a cartel assassin:
To that end, Gen. Kelly also shared his thoughts on cartels in 2014 with PRISM magazine:
These are international criminal networks – everything gets in. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of illicit narcotics. Relatively small amounts are taken out of the flow by our border controls.
“Could someone come in with a weapon of mass destruction, biological weapon travel on this network?” Of course! Last year [2013], this network carried 68,000 children into the United States. We are dealing with a very efficient network, which worries me.
Can you see why Trump chose Kelly from the beginning?
John Kelly is a plain spoken pragmatist who lost his son in President Bush’s ill fated desert wars. He understands crime – both within the United States, and the external elements which fuel the problem. He speaks of democracy and sovereign rights. When asked by PRISM magazine in 2014 about anti-American sentiment brewing in South America, Kelly responded “if they are all functioning democracies – as we understand it with a functioning free press, with functioning human rights protections, with militaries sub-ordinate to civilian control – they have every right to go in any direction they want and choose their alliances.”
In other words, Kelly’s core values are in alignment with the constitution and the ‘law and order’ presidency Trump promised when he was elected. He’s also a disciplinarian, a seasoned voice of reason, and perhaps most importantly – a key player in the shrinking circle of advisors the President can trust.
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America is under assault on so many fronts. But the so-called ‘War of Drugs’ is a stupendous failure. If Trump and Kelly’s idea is more of the same, then it will only get worse.
It’s hard to square the ‘War on Drugs’ and an ‘alignment with the constitution’. These are incompatible opposites. I hope that Trump and Kelly recognize it. Drugs have to be dealt with in the same way as cigarettes and alcohol – otherwise this war will become a march to totalitarianism.
The larger worry is that America is being destroyed by drugs and human trafficking in the same way that China was destroyed by opium. China still has not recovered from that period of their history – the cultural scars run deep.
In 1823, a 24-year-old American, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton. He became a key player in the opium trade and made a fortune. He returned to NY in 1851 and gave his daughter Sara in marriage to James Roosevelt. They would become the parents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I agree for the most part. For 30+ years the horribly failed war on drugs focused on propaganda to shame users, and the arrest of low level dealers – which does absolutely nothing if the border is a sieve. It’s led to the destruction of the black community and packed jails with people who never deserved to be there, becoming ‘radicalized’ by the system.
Trump is planning on physically preventing trafficking with the wall, border security, and hitting “bad hombres” upstream in the supply chain, while previous administrations have turned a blind eye.
That said, I’m 100% against Sessions and his stupid war on pot.
You called it Fly. This is a war for the heart and soul of America. We are being poisoned physically and spiritually. Who benefits from 300 million Americans zonked out on Oxy, banging 13 year old hookers from Guatemala? And who the hell set up the rat lines to make it happen. Like the rat lines the Klintons have out of Haiti.
Yeah, the war on drugs destroyed the black community, sure.
97% of all gun related crime in NYC is caused by minorities. They are destroying themselves.
The war on drugs is a phenomenal success…just like prohibition was a phenomenal success for the likes of Kennedys’ etc. If the gov’t wanted to eliminate crime and profiteering of the likes of CIA from drug trade, drugs would’ve been legalized and regulated long time ago.
ZPN I agree that the wall, the Cartels and the gangs are critical elements in stopping the illegal trade. In a perverse way, the wall may actually benefit Mexico more than the USA in that it will cut off the source of income, weapons and other resources from the drug Cartels. This is a good thing for Mexico.
I’m not worried about Sessions; it is Congress’ job to make the law and Sessions has to follow it. But the War on Drugs and things like Civil Asset Forfeiture are connected at the hip. I pray that Trump and Kelly understand how to unwind this twin assault on the Constitution and find a smarter and more enlightened solution to this problem.
I’ve briefly read through Sessions’ asset forfeiture policy, and it is almost like he is trying to take it out of the hands of the States where it is still used. A number of states have severely restricted, or eliminated it by law. I cannot determine whether Sessions’ policy is simply an attempt to bring it under control – remove abuses. This could be the net effect.
Supply meets demand. I think sex trafficking is awful. That being said, consider the mentality of the customer, and why it exists.