The cartel is winning and winning big; they are kicking our butts,” complained the commissioner of this sparsely populated but large county bordering Texas, near El Paso. “We get so tied up and focused on the asylum seekers or the illegal immigrant aspect of what’s going on at our southern border, but the reality of it is that it’s nothing but a mere smoke screen for the cartel. They’re using these large groups of migrants as nothing more than a smoke screen to smuggle their drugs across the southern border. Meanwhile, as soon as those agents are exhausted, those critical spots, they’re sending boatloads of drugs across the border in unsecured areas. The shutting down of the checkpoints on the major drug smuggling corridors is a recipe for disaster. Now they have a green light to shuttle drugs through our counties and through our rural areas, with no security in place.