“It’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” former President Donald Trump said in a campaign video last month.
Expecting that Trump's call to action would not be taken up by the Biden regime, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has put the cartels in the crosshairs of his state forces.
Most recently, Abbott deployed Texas Rangers personnel to seize a long-disputed island in the Rio Grande that had been on cartel control.
"This war has just begun," Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) wrote for DailyMail.com on Thursday.
"And whether or not Texas or federal government want to admit it, the border with Mexico has now been militarized for the first-time against foreign criminal organizations," wrote Bensman in an eyewitness account of the Texas Rangers' assault on Fronton Island.
Cartels, specifically the Gulf Cartel and Cartel del Noreste (CDN) saw an opportunity to take control of the Fronton Island as, for decades, neither the U.S. nor Mexico claimed Fronton Island as their own, the report noted.
Bensman noted that he was "embedded with the Texas state mission to retake a densely overgrown island near the isolated village of Fronton, 250 miles south of San Antonio, that has fallen under the control of these ultra-violent criminal organizations. As a condition of my exclusive access, the identities of these Texas officers and troopers are being kept secret for their safety."
The cartels were using the island to stash drugs and as a safe haven when fleeing American law enforcement or Mexico's military.
"They also have no compunction against shooting at anyone – be they rival cartel members or Americans – who might get in their way," Bensman wrote.
In August, trail cameras captured grainy images of three suspected cartel gunmen carrying rifles and dressed in body armor crossing into Fronton from Mexico. Months earlier five alleged Cartel Del Noreste members were arrested in the same area. They were armed and dressed in tactical gear.
"It's an island of death," said Jaeson Jones, a retired captain in DPS's intelligence division who fought against the cartels for years and knows Fronton well. "It's dangerous man," he added, especially now that cartels are cashing in on the burgeoning human smuggling business.
"Indeed, each night hundreds of immigrants cross through the Fronton area and the cartels blend in with them," Bensman wrote.
Texas DPS Regional Director Victor Escalon said Texas was forced to take action: "The federal government is not able to cover all these areas and provide for the safety and security of landowners. You have people out here saying, 'hey man, I'm out feeding my cows and I see three men coming across with backpacks and they're armed. Why do I have to live like that?' "
Texas conducted surveys that determined Fronton Island was its territory, allowing Abbott's forces to move in.
Dealing with the threat of sniper fire coming from bluffs in Mexico which overlook the island and Africanized killer bees on the island, the Rangers "boarded All-Terrain Vehicles and roared off in a convoy through thick brush and deep mud created by a rare overnight rainfall," Bensman wrote. "At least today no one shot at the Texas troopers, but that's no guarantee they won't find themselves under attack in the future."
After taking control of the island, Bensman added, "These vanguards will secure the island to allow for Texas National Guard engineers to safely bring in bulldozers and heavy machinery to completely denude the landscape of trees and brush before they fortify it with concertina wire."
After Texas forces seized it, the island will be patrolled "as if it were a warzone, though few think this takeover will do much to encourage the cartels to find another line of work," Bensman wrote.
Mike Salinas, a recently retired Border Patrol of 30 years told Bensman: "[The cartels] will still be able to move whatever commodity north or south. It's going to be a speed bump for them. They have the resources, money and time."
Texas is determined to carry on.
"If the cartels move somewhere else, we'll identify it and just follow them up and down the river," DPS's Escalon told Bensman. "The way we look at this is - this is a forever operation."
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