… in late December, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to ask for greater assistance. Those conversations were “preliminary,” the officials said, and did not result in hard promises from either side.
In a press conference on Friday, López Obrador called on the U.S. to approve a plan that would deploy $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries, suspend the U.S. blockade of Cuba, remove all sanctions against Venezuela and grant at least 10 million Hispanics living in the U.S. the right to remain and work legally.
Think of them as a more prolific mafia. Entertainment venues, restaurants, hotels, etc. will all likely be partially owned or pay protection to a cartel or local lord. When I was in a particular town, everyone in the area knew that they owed most of their entirely legal livelihood to the local drug lord. He just owned that much of the city.
Plus the other things folks have said, like other drugs and industries.