The border crisis is real and Christie Hutcherson, the founder of Women Fighting For America (WFFA), estimates that five million illegals have crossed the border since January of 2021. That number is over twice the two million nationwide encounters estimated by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Hutcherson says the official statistics far underestimate the number of crossings because "those who are counting are not looking at the right numbers and getaways are vastly underestimated."
However, it is what those numbers mean to the safety and security of Americans that is most terrifying. The drug cartels are allegedly regularly murdering journalists and other individuals execution-style. A video of an execution-style murder was given to UncoverDC by Hutcherson that is too graphic to publish. It allegedly shows a young journalist in Mexico with hands bound behind his back, kneeling on the ground. He is slowly surrounded by a group of young men who proceed to brutally and repeatedly shoot him at point-blank range. Mexican journalists are being killed at an alarming rate merely for speaking the truth about the murderous cartels.
Hutcherson says murder is a common occurrence at the border now—so much so that murdered or dismembered bodies are found on ranches weekly and local law enforcement no longer picks them up because they can't pay for funeral costs. Hutcherson says that increasingly, drug cartels are operating with impunity right here on U.S. soil and our government is either doing very little to stop it or the measures they employ are all but ineffective. For example, in Cochise County in Arizona, the "apprehension rate by border patrol and other official governmental efforts is only 27 percent," according to Hutcherson.
Women and children are used as a front and are brutally raped and trafficked daily. "Young men," Hutcherson says, "whose average age is between 20 to 28," are the individuals most likely to disappear into the interior U.S. Many are mules carrying in millions in drugs like Fentanyl in backpacks. She says that she increasingly sees evidence of known terrorists crossing the border from the four countries currently on the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Those countries are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
Hutcherson says that she also has evidence of these young men being held at "bases within bases" to which few people have access. These men, she says, are euphemistically being called "exotics." She worries they may be being held for reasons that are not beneficial to Americans. Hutcherson said:
"The United Nations, American immigration lawyers, non-profit migrant advocacy groups, and President Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security, are all working together to offer illegals in the town of Reynosa, Mexico, $800 in credit cards, a cellphone, three meals a day, legal coaching, and a daily chance at a lottery to obtain a U.S. lawyer to help process them into the U.S."
150-500 illegals per month wait anxiously for a bullhorn to sound announcing a lottery win signifying a chance to cross the border and stay in America legally. Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration studies confirms the agreement:
"[N]ewly arrived migrants begin the process of seeking asylum in the United States from Reynosa (often with a new cell phone app and assisted by American immigration lawyers) and then to wait in line for a rich reward: a CPB invitation to enter the United States at the port of entry on the way to settling in an American city of their choosing and to work while waiting for their asylum claims to adjudicate. The Reynosa system offers a chance to bypass [expensive payments for crossing to drug cartels] for those willing to wait—sometimes for several months.
Pastor Hector De Luna, who runs Senda De Vida, said cheers break out every morning when he gets on a bullhorn and calls out the day's lucky winning (cell phone) number from a first-come, first-served list his organization keeps and matches to how many CBP said it they will take in."
'You need to see the person when they heard their number called. My God,' he told the Center for Immigration Studies last week during an on-site visit to the compound and the downtown overflow camp. 'By the next morning, the next day, they're calling me, 'I'm over here in Chicago! I'm going to Chicago. I'm flying to Chicago. I'm on the bus to Chicago.' And always telling everybody because this can happen to anybody, wow, 'I'm okay. Keep strong!'"
CBP cooperates with the enterprise daily, communicating how many invitation slots the agency will grant and making sure its officers are there halfway down the international bridge for migrant handoffs under the watch of at least one of several American immigration lawyers, Pastor De Luna said."
Hutcherson employs Laurence Kennedy's security firm, Kennedy International Logistics and Services and Strategic Response Partners, founded by Steve Slepcevic to help with her work at the border. After nine months on the border with her two teams of highly trained private contractors, Hutcherson unequivocally states that "open borders are, hands down, the single biggest threat to the safety and security of this country, with the [inextricably linked] election security close behind." She and the two security contractors funded four different border apprehension test programs with drones to apprehend illegals and drug cartels at the border.
The "proof of concept" work was implemented in Kinney County in Texas, La Joya, and Cochise and Yuma County in Arizona. The shortages in law and border enforcement and her love of country are what motivated the dangerous missions. She and her teams work under the direction of local sheriffs in every instance. Her teams have highly trained drone operators who can track, with coordinates and heat maps in real-time, cartel-run drug mules and illegals attempting to cross the border. Their rate of apprehension is close to 100 percent. She goes where others cannot or will not go.
In Kinney, Hutcherson has the blessing and full cooperation of Sheriff Brad Coe. He and Hutcherson were featured in a recent Wall Street Journal story.
"We are not allowed to go onto Indian reservations. The reservations earn 5% of the take on drugs coming into the U.S. on reservations on the border in exchange for allowing illegals to cross on those lands. The drones allow us to operate on the borders of the reservations and capture illegals. The drones operate in airspace that is not under the jurisdiction of the reservations, enabling her teams to capture illegals much more effectively."
She says she is "bringing solutions to problems at the border." Hutcherson and her teams were featured on Fox News last month in a spot that explains the effectiveness of her drone capture program.
UncoverDC spoke with Arizona's Rep. Mark Finchem about the matter at length on Friday. He, Senator Sonny Borelli, and Rep. Leo Biassiuci want Arizona officials in the executive branch to consider utilizing Hutcherson's private contractor solution to solve the border crisis. He says he has been met with resistance and frustrating bureaucratic mindsets from the governor's office and the Arizona Department of Homeland Safety. He doesn't understand why government officials continue to operate with such resistance to innovation in policy and management decisions. "The default mindset in the executive branch," said Finchem, Seems to always go for more government."
The trio of legislators want to test run an official government-coordinated "skinny project" but with the hire of private contractors running a border apprehension program like the one developed by Hutcherson and her teams. He is amazed at her success at the border.
AZ State Rep. Mark Finchem/Photo by Michael Meister | Arizona Republic/pool
Finchem says that conventional methods are woefully inadequate for the task of running down cartel activity. Fixed cameras, rugged and remote terrain and extremely short-staffed law and border enforcement make it extremely challenging to keep up with the cartels. Finchem told UncoverDC:
"Hutcherson and her teams have the manpower, the skilled pilots, the data uplink and data downlink architecture. They operate with real-time data, in the moment, when they need it. The interventions can be surgically applied to the various border hotspots. He wants to see the operation go to a hot spot for thirty days and measure the outcome. Start with Cochise, and if that is successful, move to Pima County."
Finchem says the system being used right now by the federal government isn't effective.
"We know there are spotters and lookouts. We know the cartels are out there. Sending your people into that environment when you don't have to. Why? Drone overwatch is flexible, unlike the static cameras used now. Drones get coordinates. There are targeted takedowns. You find and follow the cartels and catch them on camera, making their backpack drops.
If it is people carrying backpacks of dope, that is what you target. Tag location, track person to the meetup and then take them down. It is much safer for law enforcement and it doesn't beat them up. And private contractors are much cheaper than bureaucratic government solutions. If you do it with private contractors and it doesn't work, you aren't saddled with overhead and equipment.
It is a common-sense way. I am stunned that we are not seeing the support that we would have expected."
Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe and Hutcherson were featured in a Dec. 16 Wall Street Journal story. Coe is very supportive of the work Hutcherson does and has cooperated with her organization to address the cartels at the border. He confirms that officials are reluctant to work with private entities. Coe stated in the article:
"The whole premise is if [migrants] know they'll be arrested, they'll go somewhere else. State authorities have resisted these private operations, saying they are concerned about armed civilians trying to act as law enforcement. On Wednesday, the ACLU and nine other organizations filed a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting that it investigate Texas state agencies and local governments involved in the effort to arrest immigrants. Among their concerns, they said, is the support, tacit or open, Kinney County has given such private groups."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently wrote what Hutcherson termed as a "hit-piece" on her and her organization for her work at the border. The story describes her and others as "preying on migrants." The SPLC has allegedly been attempting for months to connect her with white supremacists and domestic terrorism because of her Jan. 6 rally in D.C.
Calling her a border vigilante in the Dec. 2 story, she was lumped in the category of "White Nationalists, Jan. 6 protestors, and QANON" for her work at the border. The SPLC characterized her as militia and a "far-right religious zealot" who allegedly function as a part of the several alleged "para-military groups" at the border.
Notably, the WSJ called her for comment on the SPLC story and then followed with the story featuring her and Coe. However, Hutcherson feels the WSJ still mischaracterized her work because of its focus on militia groups.
Hutcherson says the characterization of a militant vigilante could not be further from the truth. She has to work with security contractors because of the dangerous nature of her work. But that does not mean she is a loose cannon. Her work is well-considered, strategic, and she always partners with local law enforcement. Hutcherson shrugs it all off, saying, "The media and organizations like SPLC often take a virtue and turn it into a vice."
Characteristically, Mark Finchem, who admires her work, was a little less forgiving in his description of the SPLC's hit piece.
"We are now seeing media that is vilifying a group of people who are stepping up like the minutemen of Lexington and Concord to defend their nation and the people in it. Many in the media do not seem to understand that they will soon be the target like that Mexican journalist who was brutally executed. Vilifying Christie's organization for doing the job the government should be doing is wrong. Why would anyone vilify the very people who are standing up for the American people? And, the media says nothing about Biden's open border policies."
What is going on in leadership in border states is abysmal. They spend their time telling you all the reasons why we can't do something. There is a clear contrast between what Christie is doing and what the government is doing—solutions vs. status quo protection."
