Biden declares Human Trafficking Prevention Month as border smuggling hits new highs

WASHINGTON — President Biden proclaimed January as Human Trafficking Prevention Month Friday — outraging critics who say that he’s to blame for record-breaking levels of people-smuggling along the US-Mexico border, where monthly illegal crossings hit an all-time high this month.

Biden’s statement decreeing the annual recognition was issued by the White House press office while he vacations in St. Croix and calls for “safe, orderly, and humane migration” despite chaotic scenes at the southern border — words notably absent from last year’s similar edict.

“It’s just disgusting that he wants to declare human trafficking awareness month,” Tom Homan, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Post.

“If anybody needs to be aware of human trafficking, it’s him. He’s enriched the human traffickers because of his lack of enforcing the border,” Homan added. “They’re making record amounts of money moving record amounts of people because of his intentional un-securing of the border.”

The White House released the proclamation amid reports that 276,000 people were detained for illegally crossing the southern border in the first 27 days of December, exceeding September’s record of nearly 270,000 over the same period.

Mark Morgan, the former acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, added: “President Biden’s open border policies have undeniably unleashed a persistent tidal wave of illegal immigration pouring across our borders, resulting in the United States being complicit in the world’s largest human smuggling and trafficking operation in modern history.”

“More than 27 million people around the world endure the abhorrent abuse of human trafficking and forced labor, including thousands of people right here in the United States,” Biden’s statement read. “It is a threat to global security, public safety, and human dignity.”

“Federal agencies are today working closely with governments and organizations around the world to address the root causes of trafficking, bring traffickers to justice, and support survivors as they recover and rebuild their lives.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met Wednesday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City to discuss border security, but left without announcing specific agreements.

Homan, a former Border Patrol agent, said the largely cartel-controlled border region sees trafficking of both migrants who are financially indentured to their smugglers after being processed by US authorities as well as of so-called “gotaways” who elude arrest and disappear into the interior after entering the US.

“They come over, then they’ve got to pay off fees and a lot of them don’t even know what they’re getting into — some of the women are forced into prostitution, others are forced into labor,” Homan said of migrants awaiting asylum decisions across the US.

“There are over 400,000 [unaccompanied] children that have been smuggled across the border [since 2021] and there’s already been three or four separate investigations finding these children working in meatpacking plants at midnight and being in forced labor, not going to school,” he added. “That’s the work of traffickers.

“On an average day, 70 to 90% of agents are pulled off the line to process [migrants],” he went on.

“As a matter of fact, this month alone, there’s five different occasions that I’m aware of where on sectors of the border, there wasn’t a single uniform on patrol because of the overwhelming number— they’re pulling everybody in for processing. That’s when the cartels traffic women and children. That’s when the cartels move the fentanyl, that’s when they move the gang members and criminals that don’t want to turn themselves in.”

Nearly 2.5 million people were apprehended after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border in fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30, the most on record. That figure does not include an estimated 670,000 gotaways, but is still up from nearly 2.4 million in fiscal 2022 and 1.7 million in fiscal 2021.

A large share of asylum seekers are allowed into the US to await court rulings and are entitled to work permits as their claims make their way through a backlogged review system.

Biden halted construction of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall on his first day as president and in June 2021 terminated the “Remain in Mexico” policy that required most asylum seekers to wait south of the border while their case is heard.

The border crisis is a political liability for Biden going into his expected rematch against Trump in next year’s election. A Pew Research poll released this month found that just 32% of Americans believed Biden could make “wise decisions about immigration policy.”