The border crisis of the Biden-Harris administration had a negative implications for all Americans, but one group that has suffered more than most—but received less attention than others—are american indians living on reservations along the border.

As part of their efforts to smuggle drugs and human traffic across the southern border, Mexican cartels they specifically targeted and devastated these reserves.

Testifying before Congress earlier this year, Verlon Jose, president of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, disclosure its tribal police force spends almost half its time dealing with immigration, drug smuggling and other border issues.

In fact, the Tohono O’odham Nation spends 3 million dollars of own funds each year for border security. In 2020, the tribe’s drug trafficking task force led an investigation into a Mexican cartel cell in Sinaloa that seized 140 pounds of heroin and 20 pounds of fentanyl powder.

Just three years later, in December 2023, thousands of newly arrived illegal immigrants camped outside on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, tribesmen were enraged as the massive group left behind trash and cut down local mesquite trees for firewood.

That reflects a standard sewer cartel tactic large groups of migrants across the border in one sector, distracting law enforcement while smuggling drugs elsewhere.

The Tohono O’odham reservation was uniquely vulnerable to such problems because of its location on Mexican border. But they are not the only American Indians suffering from the border policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Even tribes in remote Montana felt the consequences and spoke about it the border crisis.

In February, the devastation the cartels wreaked on the state and its reserves came to light. Montana’s isolation has resulted in drug prices 20 times higher than in major cities, attracting powerful cartels capable of establishing a monopoly on the trade.

“Right now, it’s like fentanyl raining on our reservation,” said Marvin Weatherwax Jr., a tribal business adviser on the Blackfeet reservation and a member of the Montana state House of Representatives.

“There is no doubt that Mexican drug cartels are playing a major role in this crisis,” he confessed Bryce Kirk, an advisor to the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes on the Fort Peck Reservation, Montana. “They found their way to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and embedded themselves in our communities and our families.”

Stacy Zinn, a former Montana Drug Enforcement Administration official, he confessed before Congress in June that drug networks associated with both the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels have been uncovered and dismantled on several reservations and across the state.

In recent years, these discoveries have led to the prosecution of dozens of cartel affiliates. Furthermore, Zinn argued that her DEA office was seriously underequipped for Montana’s monumental drug problems, with only four officials covering the entire eastern portion of the Big Sky State.

One of the reasons cartels gravitate to Indian soil is that it is more difficult to arrest them there. Tribal law enforcement officers only have the authority to arrest and prosecute fellow tribesmen, while local and state law enforcement generally have no jurisdiction on tribal lands without express permission from tribes.

This forced the reserves to rely on the slow work of the FBI and other federal officials to obtain warrants and arrests for cartel members. Criminals can thus move in and out of Indian soil without fear of swift law enforcement action.

In a congressional hearing in April, President Jeffrey Stiffarm of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana specifically blamed the crisis regarding the inaction of the federal government.

“The FBI doesn’t do anything on the reservation unless we have a death or a serious crime,” he said. “They are reactive, not proactive.” Fort Belknap Police Chief in June appointed on the Biden-Harris administration to ensure southern border and called on Congress to pass tougher penalties for fentanyl and methamphetamine.

“We are fighting a losing battle. The cartels win. Drug Dealers Win,” Stiffarm said.