By CHRISTOPHER MANION
According to Denise George, the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the notorious New York financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused and trafficked young women and girls, some as young as 13, for over twenty years. She labeled Epstein’s operation as an “expansive scheme of human trafficking and sexual abuse.”
Epstein was facing 45 years in prison for child trafficking when he was found dead in a New York prison four years ago this month. The jury is still out on the cause of his death: Suicide? Perhaps he was despondent. After all, he was a multi-millionaire who had been coddled by law enforcement for years, suddenly stuck in a prison cell.
Or perhaps not. Countless members of America’s most elite political and financial castes had been entertained on Epstein’s “Pleasure Island,” a luxurious hideaway that abounded in beautiful underage teenage girls.
Epstein’s presence testifying in a court of law would have been most unwelcome to his former guests.
No matter: He very conveniently died.
But child trafficking didn’t die with Epstein. In fact, today it’s a booming international criminal industry.
Angel Studio’s recent premiere of The Sound of Freedom takes a deep dive into sex trafficking’s Pit of Hell. Its stunning success implies that Americans might be ready to confront this rough beast and throttle it.
But they’ll have their work cut out for them.
Trafficking cartels from Central America and Mexico are now active in every school district in the United States. Don’t think so? Name any neighborhood where you can’t buy illegal drugs. And when you buy illegal drugs, you’re dealing with the long arm of the Cartel.
These criminal gangsters are not nice people. As a volunteer as a translator for law enforcement, I hear it and I see it, right down to the border of our property. A few years ago, on the bank of the Shenandoah a hundred feet downriver from our farm, a Cartel gang beheaded a girl whom they suspected of being an informer.
In a neighboring Virginia county, Cartel members are intimidating entire families. In a typical case, a Coyote shows up unannounced at the home of a girl one of their members met in high school. “We want your daughter to attend our parties. If you don’t let her, remember, we know where you live,” he tells the terrorized parents.
Traffickers pose a threat to every American family and neighborhood. Yet, Attorney General Merrick Garland focuses instead on his anti-Catholic crusade. For months he has stonewalled congressional demands for the facts on the FBI’s SpyOp targeting TLM “trad terrorists.”
One would think that our Justice Department could more effectively devote its time and resources shutting down the child traffickers in the Coyote Cartels. Who wouldn’t stand up and cheer?
Well, there are, shall we say, mixed emotions on the matter.
“We’re Against Some Traffickers, But Not Others”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes a monthly “Antitrafficking Newsletter,” but it doesn’t focus on the Coyote Cartels and the criminal role they play on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border. In fact, I can’t find one mention of the Coyote Cartels in their newsletters (I’ve asked. No reply).
Perhaps that’s because the newsletter’s editors realize that, right down the hall at their D.C. headquarters, USCCB lawyers and lobbyists are working hard every day to bring in more taxpayer millions to fund the bishops’ secular border NGOs. Those “charities” play a vital role in Joe Biden’s human trafficking operation that brings millions of illegal aliens into the United States every year.
And so do the Coyotes.
It is important to note that the Cartel’s sophisticated international crime syndicate traffics in a lot more than illegal aliens. It brings Fentanyl-laced fake medications that kill over one hundred thousand Americans a year. And, as The Federalist reported this week, the Cartels are also behind the nationwide retail theft epidemic that is sweeping the nation.
“Organized retail crime is leading to more brazen and more violent attacks in retail stores throughout the country,” said Steve Francis, a senior investigator at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2021. “Many of the criminal rings orchestrating these thefts are also involved in other serious criminal activity such as human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, weapon trafficking, and more,” he added.
Curious. The Cartel’s retail theft operations cost the United States more than $100 billion a year. The Cartel’s Fentanyl kills over 100,000 Americans a year. And the bishops’ “charitable” operations bring in over $100 million a year from Joe Biden.
Perhaps it is no wonder that one searches in vain for even one U.S. bishop who will publicly condemn the Coyote Cartels. Like Joe Biden, they’re “Off Limits!”
A Mixed Message
Confronts The Chaos
When an immigrant crosses the border, he brings his culture with him, says Thomas Sowell, author of several landmark studies on the subject.
And where does the immigrant come from?
Well, most of them come through Mexico. And under President Lopez Obrador, Mexico has experienced its highest murder rate ever. What passes for Mexican “law enforcement” is powerless against the Cartels.
In fact, the Coyote gangs in charge of large swaths of Mexico produce a chaotic situation similar to that in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other Democrat-run metropolitan areas, whose high crime rates meet little opposition from radical leftist prosecutors.
And Dr. Sowell is right. The vast majority of the millions of illegal aliens now residing in the United States come from countries far more corrupt than ours.
Of course, they’re “bringing their culture with them,” and that’s having an impact. So many have been settled in major U.S. urban areas that Democrat mayors in “Blue Cities” like Chicago and New York are complaining about it, even though they support Biden’s mass immigration policies.
We expect that sort of cognitive dissonance from our politicians. But from our bishops?
We need to work on this.
A Sad And Lasting Legacy
Criminal sexual assault charges against Theodore McCarrick were dropped in Massachusetts Wednesday, after a judge ruled that McCarrick is not mentally competent to stand trial.
Both state prosecutors and defense counsel agreed with the finding.
“McCarrick’s predations were an open secret,” Bishop Accountability’s Anne Barrett Doyle told Catholic News Agency. “Many of his fellow cardinals and bishops knew, and they did nothing. They didn’t report him to law enforcement, they didn’t go public with the information, and they didn’t reach out to those he assaulted.”
As a cardinal, Theodore McCarrick was once the most powerful American prelate, both at home and abroad. He masterminded the 2002 “Protection Charter” that, in essence, exempted some 150 bishops who had enabled abusers from their moral duty to resign (and none did). He oversaw the appointments of a generation of bishops, many of whom are still in office. Notorious for passing out cash to Vatican prelates, he traveled the world as an emissary for Pope Francis before being reduced to the lay state in 2019.
His legacy will burden Holy Mother Church for years. As Mitchell Garabedian, who represented McCarrick’s alleged victim, said after the hearing, “In spite of the criminal court’s decision today, many clergy sexual abuse victims feel as though former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is and will always be the permanent personification of evil within the Catholic Church.”
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