Cartels Overrunning US Indian Reservations

Biden border policies even hitting Native Americans hard – and religious leaders say nothing

Mexican drug cartels are essentially seizing control of reservations all over the country – even as far north as Montana. And, native Americans are placing the blame squarely at the feet of Joe Biden and his devastating border ineptitude.

The drug cartels have an almost entirely free hand from the US-Mexican border all the way up to Canada, and multiple points in-between.

So powerful have the cartels become that tribal leaders in Montana were threatened with being killed if they testified this week before Congress, so they backed out.

In fact, the express purpose of the hearing before the US House Committee on Natural Resources was to examine cartel operations specifically targeting Indian reservations,

One leader, however, brave enough to attend, was Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, just 40 miles south of the Canadian border.

"We're fighting a losing battle and the cartels are winning," testified Stiffarm. "The drug dealers are winning. They're overrunning our reservations."

'The drug dealers are winning. They're overrunning our reservations.'

Stiffarm, who has served Indian communities in law enforcement for over 20 years, detailed a litany of the strategies used by the highly-organized, well-resourced cartels.

"These Drug Cartels are specifically targeting Indian Country because of a dangerous combination of rural terrain, history of addiction, under-resourced law enforcement, legal loopholes, sparsely populated communities, and exorbitant profits, and it is devastating Tribal reservations."

Stiffarm reminded the Committee that his reservation comprises 652,000 acres (1,014 square miles) with nearly 7,000 tribal members living on the land. The cartels know that a mere nine law enforcement officers are charged to serve the community 24 hours a day. Less than 20 US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents are assigned to the whole state.

The cartels also know profits for drugs, especially fentanyl, rise each mile they travel north. "Profits for these cartels soar the farther they get from the southern border," he pointed out. "A fentanyl pill that costs less than $1.00 in Mexico and southern states, can go for over $100 on our Reservation."

Fort Belknap's president noted other wily strategies used by the cartels. They'll send in a handsome young man who uses his wiles to scam a romance with a local Indian girl. Once the hustler gains her trust, he gets her hooked on drugs — and the cartel have a channel into the reservation.

Another Indian leader, Marvin Weatherwax, Jr., who serves on the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, summarized the bad news to NBC News. The cartels "have infiltrated our reservations, married in, basically set up shop. It's a problem that won't go away."

One of the most-powerful drug-trafficking syndicates in the world, Sinaloa, once run by El Chapo, and now by his sons, is reportedly at the helm of business operations in Montana. Weatherwax's Blackfoot reservation, along with Stiffarm's Fort Belknap, plus Montana's four other reservations — Flathead, Rocky Boy's, Fort Peck and Crow — are awash in drugs, particularly fentanyl.

'Right now fentanyl is raining on our reservation.'

Weatherwax, who also represents the 15th district in the Montana House of Representatives, said, "Right now it's as if fentanyl is raining on our reservation."

The Blackfeet live in fear of the steady influx of the drug into the community. Two years ago, Weatherwax's community declared a state of emergency after 17 people overdosed and four died in one week.

The situation is "so serious," he says, "it is pretty much wiping out an entire generation."

Tribal women attest to the devastating effects of the surge, citing increases in sexual abuse and sexual assaults, human trafficking, child abuse and child neglect, as well as domestic violence.

Why Montana?

"People are surprised," comments Jesse Laslovich, the U.S. attorney for Montana. "You’re as far north as you can get in the United States, and yet we have the cartel here."

Corroborating Stiffarm's testimony, the attorney says the big reason is "money."

"It's big business," stating the obvious. "They are transnational criminal organizations... sophisticated people who have a lot of resources and who are as dangerous as they come."

'Drug cartels are transnational criminal organizations who are as dangerous as they come.'

The US Catholic bishops — and the Vatican — have supported the Democrats' open border policies that wave cartels into the country.

In 2016, Pope Francis slammed Trump as not being Christian because he called for the deportation of illegal immigrants and a wall between the US and Mexico.

In 2020, the pontiff directed $500,000, funneled through Peter's Pence, to help immigrants in Mexico reach, and pass through, the US border.

While many prelates may preach about the virtues of unbridled immigration, they overlook, and neglect to catechize their flocks about, what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about the non-therapeutic use of drugs, their manufacture and distribution. The Catechism reads:

"The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law" (2291).

Dr. Barbara Toth has a doctorate in rhetoric and composition from Bowling Green State University. She has taught at universities in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Her work in setting up a writing center at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahmen University, an all-women's university in Riyadh, has been cited in American journals. Toth has published academic and non-academic articles and poems internationally.

To support articles like this, please consider a donation to Souls and Liberty.