The border is more out of control than ever.

The Border Patrol is reporting a record 260,000 migrant illegal crossings into the U.S. in September.  There's also unknown tens of thousands being flown or bused in through Joe Biden's CBPOne app "parole" program.  And of course, there are tens of thousands of uncounted "gotaways."  All told, more than two million unvetted migrants have been allowed into the country based on Joe Biden's open borders.

Why so many?  Why all at once?  It's worth asking because these numbers expected to get even bigger.

Follow the money.

And now several stories are emerging to show that it's not just Mexican cartels which are making money off these illegal migrant crossings — there's a whole chain of characters who have been finding in the unguarded border a huge cash cow.

Start with Our Friends the Colombians.  Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady has a terrific column on the little-noted role of now-far-left Colombia.

Turns out both its international criminal syndicates and its actual government are raking in big bucks in "crossing fees" lining up illegal migrants for the states and ferrying them into Panama past its notoriously dangerous swamp jungle known as the Darien Gap, where some 500,000 are now expected to cross this year in an "unbroken chain" of migrants coming through.  She writes:

In Washington and New York, politicians on both sides of the aisle are thinking hard about how to regain control of the U.S. southern border or about how to house and feed the enormous influx. They don't talk much about removing the incentive that U.S. asylum law creates for large numbers of economic migrants to make the dangerous trek. They talk even less about Colombia's alleged complicity in a giant human smuggling business run by a transnational criminal organization in the small town of Acandi on the northern side of the Gulf of Uraba. The cartel is called Clan del Golfo.

A video by CNN en Espanol journalist Wilson Barco, released last week, documents how more than 2,000 people a day are moved into the jungle on the Colombian side of the Darien to help them illegally enter Panama. It starts with power boats carrying 50 to 100 migrants at a time across the gulf. Mr. Barco says that after disembarking in Acandi, they wait in long lines to register with local officials who take their personal data and check to see if they have sufficient funds to make the trip.

The news agency AFP reported last week that the itinerants pay a minimum of $170 each to the business for guides to take them through the gap. For $500 each, migrants can hire porters to carry their belongings and to be taken by boat on part of the jungle journey rather than walking. The business gives customers wristbands to indicate what they paid. Mr. Barco's video includes comments from the governor of the Colombian department of Choco, who endorses the operation.

A Panamanian official told me last week that this is why Colombia has no interest in helping its smaller neighbor secure the border: Local authorities, the official said, are working with the cartel. "U.S. officials know that the Colombian government has a lot of responsibility in this, which is a business for it."  

That's Colombia, our onetime top ally in Latin America, and major foreign aid recipient, making money at the Panama end of the migrant feedline by shipping millions of illegals into el norte. 

Don't forget that Colombia's far-left former guerrilla president, Gustavo Petro, has declared the migrant surge a sort of triumphant invasion of the states because of its global warming.  He said as much at the United Nations.  He's also under investigation for cartel corruption these days.  Wonder why.

I wrote about this earlier here, noting that according to the Washington Examiner:

Colombian President Gustavo Petro predicted that "billions of people will defy armies" to migrate to the United States and other Western democracies, which he has previously likened to Nazi Germany.

"Billions of people will defy armies and will change the earth to do this," Petro told the United Nations General Assembly. "The exodus across the borders has increased. They have set the dogs and the hounds on the immigrants. They have put people on horses to pursue them with whips in their hands, with stocks and chains. They have built prisons."

...and...

"Prisons have even been built at sea so that these women and men cannot tread the Earth of the white people, who still believe themselves to be the superior race," he said Tuesday. "[They] are nostalgic for this, and through their choices and elections they revive the leader who said so and who killed millions as a result."

And lots and lots of migrant dollars have gone into Colombian pockets linked to Colombia's bad government, which runs an economy so bad that people want to leave.  That didn't use to happen when Colombia had a civilized president, such as U.S. friend and ally Alvaro Uribe, who ripped apart Colombia's Marxist narco-cartels and made Colombia a livable country. 

What a hypocrite of forked tongue this wretched Petro is.  Instead of our friend Uribe, now it's "our friends the Colombians."

This isn't the only money-making scandal around the migrant surge.

America First Legal found out that Biden cronies are raking in the bucks for migrant services, turning up at migrant-oriented NGOs just as cash is flowing through no-bid contracts:

Colombian President Gustavo Petro predicted that “billions of people will defy armies” to migrate to the United States and other Western democracies, which he has previously likened to Nazi Germany.

“Billions of people will defy armies and will change the earth to do this,” Petro told the United Nations General Assembly. “The exodus across the borders has increased. They have set the dogs and the hounds on the immigrants. They have put people on horses to pursue them with whips in their hands, with stocks and chains. They have built prisons.”

...and...

"Prisons have even been built at sea so that these women and men cannot tread the Earth of the white people, who still believe themselves to be the superior race,” he said Tuesday. “[They] are nostalgic for this, and through their choices and elections they revive the leader who said so and who killed millions as a result.”

And lots and lots of migrant dollars have gone into Colombian pockets linked to Colombia's bad government, which runs an economy so bad people want to leave. That didn't used to happen when Colombia had a civilized president, such as U.S. friend and ally Alvaro Uribe, who ripped apart Colombia's Marxist narcocartels and made Colombia a liveable country. 

What a hypocrite of forked tongue this wretched Petro is. Instead of our friend Uribe, now it's "our friends the Colombians."

This isn't the only money-making scandal around the migrant surge.

America First Legal found out that Biden cronies are raking in the bucks for migrant services, turning up at migrant-oriented NGOs just as cash is flowing through no-bid contracts:

/1💰BREAKING💰

We just uncovered new documents obtained from our litigation against HHS, revealing how the Biden admin used $2 billion dollars in taxpayer funded contracts to house illegal aliens and enrich a former Obama/Biden admin staffer.

Must-read thread:

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) September 28, 2023

In this case, a former Biden transition staffer named Andrew Lorenzen-Strait turned up at an NGO called "Family Endeavors" in Texas, and voilà: the group was awarded a huge $530-million no-bid contract for migrants on the surge.  Other federal contracts followed, which was interesting because the group had never taken large-scale contracts of this kind from the feds in the past.

It's kind of as though he knew the migrant surge was coming.  James O'Keefe got a tape of him calling it a "corrupt bargain" worth 2 billion in federal dollars.

Legal or not, it's obviously a moneymaker for the Biden loyalist crony set, and the amounts spent are big.

It's not just Biden cronies making money, either.  In Chicago, there was a recent scandal over how much city workers working with migrants are making.

According to the Daily Mail:

Chicago has paid at least $56 million to Favorite Healthcare Staffing to care for the more than 13,000 migrants who have arrived this year, according to an NBC 5 investigation that found nurses were making $135 an hour or more. A manager was paid $14,000 for just one week of work, and a nurse earned an eye-watering $20,000 for a week in December. Both invoices included overtime.

'To see invoices like that are disgusting. They are outrageous and they are cause for an immediate investigation,' Aldermen Raymond Lopez told NBC. 

The Mail reported that the game was similar in New York:

Meanwhile, New York is currently paying three times more for contracted laundry services at some migrant shelters than it does at homeless shelters, according to a report by Gothamist.

It's obviously a game, a money-making scam.  These great migrant surges with more and more snoots are going into the troughs, and more and more needs for migrants come in to keep the dollars flowing.  All of these migrant chiseling operations go well beyond what the Mexican cartels are making.  Whether it's federal dollars or migrant savings, money is whooshing in to ever gamier groups of politicized and criminal players.  That's what's really driving the migrant surge.  Cut off some of these money-making scams, and watch the surge evaporate.  Leave it be, and watch ever more migrants roll in, given the global demand.

It's a disgusting state of affairs, and Joe Biden is doing literally nothing about it other than encourage it.

Image: Screen shot from Alerta Mundial video via Twitter.