A CBP release states the girls, 3 and 5 years old, were dropped from the 14-foot barrier onto the north side of the wall by two human smugglers just west of Mt. Cristo Rey.

The two girls were uninjured and are in a Border Patrol “temporary holding” pending placement by Health and Human Services, according to the release.

“I’m appalled by the way these smugglers viciously dropped innocent children from a 14-foot border barrier last night. If not for the vigilance of our agents using mobile technology, these two tender-aged siblings would have been exposed to the harsh elements of desert environment for hours,” Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent of the El Paso Sector, said in a statement.

Chavez said CBP is working with authorities in Mexico to identify the “ruthless human smugglers” and hold them “accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

While these flows at the border are a significant concern, a pressing question is who is profiting and how it increases their power. According to Jaeson Jones, retired captain of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, the beneficiaries are cartels. He now runs an organization called Tripwires and Triggers that seeks to bring media attention to the border risks that do not receive sufficient coverage.

It was never about the human trafficking that was taking over at our border. Or the human smuggling issue. Fentanyl pouring into the country which we knew was going to be a killer. But there is also the fact that the cartels themselves had gone through a quantum leap and change from originally organized crime into what we see now as a parallel government.

In his description, it is clear that these are not unsophisticated gangs that may operate in a territory but don’t control it. They are disciplined, militarized, transnational organizations that wield power over local and national governments to the south of our border. Cartels are not just a U.S.-Mexico problem. Sinaloa is in 54 nations globally, and Carte Jalisco in over 48 countries.