It is said that when President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers early in his presidency, it sent a message not only to the unions, but to leaders around the world.  This guy is not Jimmy Carter, and this guy is serious.  It was no coincidence that our hostages held by Iran were released the day Reagan took office.

It should not be surprising that President Trump has accomplished something in three months that Obama couldn't accomplish in three months what Barack Obama didn't in six years: find and apprehend the killer of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, murdered with a weapon smuggled into Mexico by the Obama administration's gun-running program, Operation Fast and Furious.  All it took was an administration serious about enforcing our existing immigration laws, from ending "catch and release" to moving to build a promised border wall.  Illegal crossings plummeted 72 percent in three months, and a message was sent to Mexico.

It is no coincidence that suddenly a joint U.S.-Mexico task force found and arrested Brian Terry's killer.  As Fox News reported:

The cartel member suspected of shooting and killing Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010 with a gun supplied by the U.S. government was arrested in Mexico Wednesday, senior law enforcement, Border Patrol, and congressional sources told Fox News. 

The suspect, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, was apprehended by a joint U.S.-Mexico law enforcement task force that included the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC).

A $250,000 reward had been sought for information leading to the arrest of Osorio-Arellanes, who was captured at a ranch on the border of the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. U.S. authorities have said they will seek his extradition.

Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010 in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a five-man cartel "rip crew," which regularly patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. 

The agent's death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them once they made their way into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing. 

Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes is not the only one responsible for Brian Terry's murder.  An accessory before the fact is one Eric Holder, former attorney general under President Obama.  Then-president Barack Hussein Obama and then-attorney general Eric Holder conceived and ran a gun-running operation called Fast and Furious, which resulted in the deaths of U.S. agents Jaime Zapata and Brian Terry.

Investors Business Daily editorialized on ATF special agent John Dodson's attempt to spread the truth on the Obama administration's effort to supply Mexican drug lords with semiautomatic weapons:

ATF Special Agent John Dodson is a national hero who in 2011 blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico.

Testifying before Congress, he disclosed that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semiautomatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, weapons that found their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with deadly results.

Dodson has put his intimate Fast and Furious knowledge into a book titled "The Unarmed Truth." It provides the first inside account of how the Obama administration permitted and helped sell some 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, guns used in the murder of two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens. ...

The operation was exposed when Brian was killed in December 2010 by an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa Cartel near Nogales, Ariz., just 10 miles from Mexico. Two Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene.

Two such weapons also were used to murder Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011, came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time. ...

"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated," Dodson, then attached to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Phoenix office, testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011.

"Rather than conduct enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals for a short time after their purchases, but nothing more," Dodson testified.

"Knowing all the while, just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, we still did nothing."

Democrats did their best to hide the truth about Fast and Furious, with A.G. Holder, the only Cabinet member ever to be held in contempt of Congress, arguably lying to Congress about his knowledge and involvement and repeatedly saying he "didn't get the memo."

American citizens and Mexican nationals to this day are in jeopardy from criminals using weapons the Obama administration funneled to them.  As Fox News reported about Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo":

A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.

A .50-caliber is a massive rifle that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter[.] ...

Federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that 'El Chapo' would put his guardsmen on hilltops to be on guard for Mexican police helicopters that would fly through valleys conducting raids. The sole purpose of the guardsmen would be to shoot down those helicopters, sources said.

As for Holder's claim that he wasn't in the loop, Investor's Business Daily noted that the paper trail indicated otherwise:

Somewhere, Scooter Libby must be scratching his head. He was indicted and convicted simply because his recall of when a meeting occurred differed from others. He didn't lie about a gun-running operation that led to the deaths of two American agents and at least 200 Mexicans.

But Attorney General Eric Holder did, according to memos obtained by CBS News and Fox News.

They show Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Fast and Furious gun-running operation. He told House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa he was "not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks."

Holder learned of the operation as early as July 2010 in a memo from the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center informing him of an operation run by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force out of the Phoenix ATF office, under which "straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels."

So Eric Holder knew about Fast and Furious months before Brian Terry's murder.  He not only knew about it, but even bragged about it to Mexican officials during a trip to Mexico:

A 2-year-old video shows a high Justice official saying "the president has directed us," including the attorney general, to speed up Project Gunrunner and the offshoot that got a border agent killed[.] ...

The video shows Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, who would resign nine months later after less than a year's service, telling reporters at a Department of Justice briefing of major policy initiatives to fight the Mexican drug cartels.

"The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels," Ogden begins, "and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration's comprehensive plan."

At the president's direction, Ogden said, the administration's plan included DOJ's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner," of which Operation Fast and Furious would be a part.

As we have noted, Attorney General Eric Holder himself gave a speech to Mexican authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, taking credit for Gunrunner as well as Fast and Furious for himself and the Obama administration.

Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner."

Project Gunrunner was the precursor for Fast and Furious.

The cartel member who actually pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Brian Terry will get his final justice.  Eric Holder, whose department knowingly and willfully put the murder weapon in his hands while running guns to Mexican drug cartels, has not.  But that may change under the new sheriff in town.  As the respected gun news website AmmoLand reports:

The brother of a slain Border Patrol agent says Donald Trump has promised answers about the Operation Fast and Furious "gunwalking" program leading to Brian Terry's death.

Kent Terry met with Trump, and says the presumptive Republican nominee will use his authority to act if he's elected president, Terry said in a Twitter post Tuesday.

"Mr. Trump said 'It's a shame Fast and Furious started and shame on them for what they are doing about it," Terry explained to this column, referring to an event at a community college in Michigan (see photo). "When I become president I will open the books on Fast and Furious and Brian. God bless your family Kent."

"Then at end of campaign speech when he got off stage he remembered me again," Terry elaborated. "First time in Brian's death I honestly believe Mr. Trump will get answers."

Final justice will happen when Eric Holder and Barack Obama are held accountable for their lies on Fast and Furious; the withholding of documents under the guise of "executive privilege," something even extended to Holder's wife; and the entire cover-up on why Brian Terry had to die.  Eric Holder has never been prosecuted for his contempt of Congress citation in this matter.  Attorney General Sessions, call your office.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.