House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) says Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is ignorant regarding specifics on how the Mexican drug cartels smuggle millions of illegal aliens across the United States-Mexico border.
During a Senate House Judiciary Committee hearing in March, Mayorkas was asked about the cartels’ use of wristbands to tag illegal aliens they smuggle. When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked, “What are these wristbands?” Mayorkas responded, “I don’t know what they are, Senator.”
In a letter, Green said he is appalled that Mayorkas does not know the intricacies of the cartels’ human smuggling operation, which serves as a billion-dollar business — even more lucrative than drug trafficking.
“Mexican cartels treat humans as mere profitable cargo and since 2021, media extensively reported that cartels require migrants, including children, to wear plastic bracelets before they cross into the U.S. from Mexico,” Green writes:
Bracelet colors, decals, and writing, reflect which cartel the migrant owes, how much, and where the migrant is in the smuggling process. While the tagging system implies an orderly process, the cartels are savage, collecting information about migrants’ families so they have a target if migrants do not pay their debts, holding migrants hostage to demand ransom, and leaving migrants, including children, to die in severe conditions. [Emphasis added]
Despite extensive news coverage and USBP’s acknowledgement that cartels use wristbands to facilitate human trafficking, you were apparently, and astonishingly, unaware of the practice. In a March 2023 hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senator Ted Cruz displayed a poster board depicting five different migrant wristbands, one of which clearly depicts the word “entrega” (delivery) and another “llegadas” (arrivals). When Senator Cruz asked you “what are these wristbands?” you responded, “I don’t know what they are, Senator.” [Emphasis added]
Your response is deeply troubling. The Committee expects that the Department’s leader is advised of important intelligence about the tactics that cartels use to smuggle millions of illegal aliens into the United States. Your ignorance of such basic and readily public information suggests a breakdown in intra-agency intelligence sharing and that such basic information related to border enforcement is not conveyed to the Department’s leadership. [Emphasis added]
Green asks Mayorkas to give the House Homeland Security Committee all internal DHS communications regarding the cartels’ human smuggling operations, specifically information regarding their use of wristbands to label illegal aliens.
Likewise, Green wants all internal communications related to Mayorkas’s daily briefings, including news articles he is sent by deputy officials. Green is asking for the information by September 4.
As Breitbart News reported last year, illegal immigration is a boon for the cartels.
Under President Joe Biden, the cartels and their coyotes are earning about $13 billion annually by smuggling illegal aliens across the border. Much of the revenue derives from effectively enslaving illegal aliens, once they have made it into the U.S., by requiring them to pay back debts.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
