OPINION:
Mexico is a lousy neighbor. It has been a flood that relentlessly carries bad things into America.
From the Mexico side, the southern border has been an open door for criminals, drugs and even untreated sewage.
The four-year Biden border put the betrayal in plain sight. Did the Mexican government stop the flow of 15 million illegal immigrants marching through its land when it had multiple chances to block and reverse the human tide? Not that I saw.
All that Americans witnessed were masses of unknowns breaking in or being processed because President Joe Biden and the Democrats made a political decision to recruit more foreign voters.
For large fees, Mexican drug cartels smuggled in the potential voters. The most vicious bandits on Earth took on the job of deciding who gained access to American neighborhoods. The cartels let in criminals, gang members, murderers, deadly drivers, pedophiles, thieves, terrorists and hundreds of thousands of lost children.
Gangs like Tren de Aragua from Venezuela and South American Theft Group from Chile set up shop in multiple states to steal and murder. To stop this crime committed by Mr. Biden on the American people, Mexico needed to confront the cartels. Mexico did not, making it a co-conspirator with both the cartels and the Democrats.
Every day, Americans get to read the horrible crimes the invaders are committing. By and large, the stories don’t show up in the liberal media. But two sources keep America informed. The Trump Department of Homeland Security and objective local news stories. Their info has been curated by conservative journalists and spread across social media.
On May 11, for example, DHS posted this on X about Waulter Jesus Traviesosoto of Venezuela: “Biden Illegal Charged With Raping Dead Girlfriend’s Underage Daughter in Montana.”
DHS said, “This monster illegally entered the country in 2023, and was RELEASED into our nation by the Biden Administration.”
The deaths and rapes did not have to happen here. If only the Biden team held migrants for vetting, rejected known criminals and put out the word to the world: Follow our immigration laws.
Instead, Mr. Biden left it up to President Trump to clean up his mess. Democrats thanked him by calling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers “Nazis,” when in fact ICE has undoubtedly saved lives.
In September 2025, the Trump administration did something no other administration had dared attempt: It confronted communist China on the high seas by seizing one of its massive, illicit cargos of methamphetamine chemicals destined for Mexico’s dominant Sinaloa cartel.
With a press conference and video, the Trump Justice Department cast a spotlight for all the world to see on the long-term, deadly alliance between two U.S. enemies: China and the cartels. China’s aim is to kill Americans. Sinaloa also buys Chinese pharmaceutical chemicals to make fentanyl, the deadliest of all, killing over 100,000 here each year.
What does Mexico do to confront China? Not much.
“The cartels are able to operate vast drug production and smuggling operations in Mexico thanks to the complicity of corrupt Mexican officials,” the Heritage Foundation reported in 2024. “The challenge of narco-corruption in Mexico has grown exponentially over the past several years, making it so that the Mexican government is, in practice, no longer a dependable good-faith partner to the United States on fentanyl trafficking.”
It added: “Chinese precursor chemicals reach Mexico often at a port or other shipping facility. Cartels bribe corrupt officials at Mexican ports to ensure their ability to access and remove the chemicals.”
In January, as Mr. Trump considered direct military action, he said the major problem is the free ride the cartels are being given: by the Mexican administration.
“The cartels are running Mexico,” he told Fox News. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “is not running Mexico. … She’s very frightened of the cartels.”
Last month, the Justice Department indicted 10 former and current Mexican government officials, accusing them of conspiring with the Sinaloa cartel. The 10 include a sitting member of the Mexican Senate.
The same month Mr. Trump was bemoaning the Mexican president, investigative journalist Peter Schweizer came out with his new book, “The Invisible Coup.” He alleges that adversaries use mass migration to disrupt America, and he names Mexico as their ally.
He says Mexico operates a network of 53 U.S. consulates who organize protests against ICE raids designed to catch illegal immigrant criminals. The consulates, he says, distribute special Spanish-language textbooks to ensure that kids see themselves as Mexicans first, not Americans.
He said on Miranda Devine’s “Pod Force One” that several elected Mexican officials tell their citizens to reclaim U.S. land. Mexico is also irresponsible on another front: human waste. It’s invading California beaches, not from cartels, but from the polluted Tijuana River.
Fox News reported May 10 that the river is flowing untreated sewage into the Pacific Ocean, with the pollutants migrating to California’s famous beaches. Coronado urged visitors to stay out of the water.
“Some of Southern California’s best-known beaches are facing repeated closures as sewage continues to contaminate coastal waters,” according to Fox News.
This is not a new problem. Over decades, Mexico has done virtually nothing to build and maintain working sewage treatment plants.
As the Environmental Protection Agency said in July, “For many decades, untreated raw sewage has flowed into Southern California from Mexico, polluting the Tijuana River Valley, closing beaches, fouling the air, harming the region’s economy, and sickening people on both sides of the border.”
Mexico and the Environmental Protection Agency said they signed a new agreement to speed up anti-sewage projects. But Californians are not holding their breaths, unless it’s to deal with the stink.
I’m making a list: killer drugs, criminal migrants, anti-American influence operations and exported sewage. I think many Americans would say, “Mexico, how about becoming a better neighbor?”
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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