Former Mexican Cartel Member Compares Border Gangs to George Soros

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday morning, Jesse Ocana, a former member of a Mexican drug cartel, compared the cartels to billionaire philanthropist and political donor George Soros.

When asked by host Bill Hemmer if the United States and Mexican government should work together to take out the cartels, Ocana replied: "It can be done. But you're talking about these cartel people, they have a lot of money. They can buy you. You can say they're like (George) Soros. They can buy people out," said Ocana.

"If you're a governor, a senator, and if you're a big man in government, they can still buy you out."

The Context

Biden continues to face bipartisan criticism over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border as the country continues to experience a high number of migrant border crossings. There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Tensions ramped up last week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that federal Border Patrol agents could remove razor wire and other barriers constructed along the border to curb immigration. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to continue to utilize the Texas National Guard to combat record numbers of migrant encounters, saying, "This is not over."

Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment.

What We Know

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador earlier this month said he requested that the U.S. send $20 billion in funds as part of a cooperative plan to help Latin American countries as record numbers of citizens of these countries seek to immigrate to the U.S. He urged Biden to suspend the U.S. blockade of Cuba, remove sanctions against Venezuela and grant visas to at least 10 million Hispanic workers already living in the U.S.

The proposal was met with criticism from some Republican senators, who have largely been critical of Biden's handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.

When people cross the US-Mexico border hoping to immigrate, they often encounter a human smuggling network, sparking concerns over the role of Mexican cartels.

The Biden administration has sought to work with Mexico to curb the number of migrants arriving at the southern border. Biden and Obrador spoke on the phone on December 21 about managing migratory flows, according to the White House.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall traveled to Mexico to discuss immigration matters with Mexican authorities.

Concerns over how to handle Mexican cartels and the drug trade remain. In 2023, the Biden administration initiated new measures to disrupt the trafficking of illicit fentanyl and its precursors into American communities and dismantle the firearms trafficking networks that enable drug traffickers to grow their enterprises.

In 2021, Biden announced an executive order—Imposing Sanctions on Foreign Persons Involved in the Global Illicit Drug Trade—to target the enablers of the global illicit synthetic drug supply chain including raw material brokers, financiers, and others.

Views

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a long-time critic of Biden and his border policies, said in her podcast in April 2023: "Because under Joe Biden the criminal cartels in Mexico have human trafficking and drug trafficking into the tens of billions of dollars, it is an industry of success, criminal success that we have never seen in the history of the world."

Connor Pfeiffer, executive director of the Forum for American Leadership, wrote in an opinion for Newsweek, stating: "The Biden administration and the Mexican government have not made significant progress in addressing insecurity in Mexico." She said that "while the initiative is heavy on meetings touting its 'success', homicides and drug trafficking continue to worsen, and the United States does not have operational control of its own border."

Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan stressed the significance of preventing the flow of fentanyl across the border.

"We fully support making sure that we have as secure a border as possible, and fentanyl is a major issue that affects all of our communities all across the country," Peters, who also chairs the committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security, previously told Newsweek. "Border security is incredibly important."

What's Next?

Biden is asking Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal that would pair border enforcement measures with aid to Ukraine to help in its ongoing war with Russia. He said on Saturday at a political event in South Carolina that he would be willing to close the U.S.-Mexico border if lawmakers would only send him a bill to sign.

However, House Speaker Mike Johnson has warned that the bill "could be dead on arrival" in his chamber as conservative hardliners argue the bill would not go far enough to end illegal immigration into the U.S.

"It would also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it can get back under control," Biden said at South Carolina's 'First in the Nation' dinner. "If that bill were the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly."

Update: 1/31/24, 13:45 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.