EL PASO, Texas—Since the start of 2025, border security measures have cost the Mexican cartels more than $1 billion, according to estimates by the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol in Texas.

“We’re hurting them in the pocketbook,” interim Border Patrol Chief for the El Paso Sector Walter Slosar tells The Daily Signal.  

In recent years, Slosar says he can recall days when as many as 2,700 illegal aliens were arriving at the border daily, but now, Border Patrol is encountering about 40 illegal aliens a day in the El Paso Sector, which includes the two westernmost counties in Texas—Hudspeth and El Paso—and all of New Mexico.   

The criminal cartels control much of the Mexican side of the southern border and force illegal aliens to pay them to either be guided to the border or smuggled across. In 2021, a House Homeland Security Committee report found that the cartels made an estimated $13 billion on human smuggling alone.

The cartels charge migrants varying amounts, based........

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