House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) have demanded information pertaining to the presence of drug cartels on tribal lands across the United States.
In a letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel, the Republicans called for details as to how Biden-Harris policies “led to violent crime and the presence of transnational drug cartels in Indian Country.”
“For four years, the Biden-Harris Administration abandoned America’s borders and failed to enforce immigration laws,” the lawmakers added. “As a result, eight million illegal aliens entered the country, including at least six million illegal aliens who were released into American communities and nearly two million illegal alien ‘gotaways’ who evaded U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the southwest border.”
According to the letter, the “complex jurisdictional authority for tribes to prosecute certain criminal offenses on reservations,” as well as the “shortage of tribal law enforcement officers,” make Indian reservations ideal locations for cartel activities. The letter further states that “jurisdictional limitations—tribal law enforcement can only prosecute tribal members and state/local law enforcement often lack authority on reservation land—leave tribal communities vulnerable to rapid cartel infiltration and little proactive federal assistance.”
In November, the Department of Justice announced results from its Operation Not Forgotten, described as the ” longest and most intense national deployment of FBI resources to address Indian Country crime to date.”
“One of the biggest problems tribal communities face is the vast amount of land to account for, requiring significant resources to crush violent crime,” Patel said of the operation. “As FBI Director, I’m committed to surging personnel to these areas and working hand-in-hand with Tribal partners. Operation Not Forgotten is a major step forward in giving these communities the justice that they deserve.”
