Former U.S. ambassador for human rights alleges Biden has created humanitarian crisis at border

President Joe Biden has manufactured a humanitarian crisis at the southern border driven by drug and human trafficking, alleges Ken Blackwell, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. 

"We have created a human rights crisis, and we've watched this slow deterioration of the notion of citizenship," Blackwell said Thursday on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show.

With an insecure border spurring skyrocketing illegal immigration in the first two years of the Biden administration, a record number of illegal migrants have died trying to cross the border, often forced to rely on violent drug cartels to shepherd them on their journey to the U.S.

Officials say 2022 was the deadliest year on record for illegal migrants, with at least 853 fatalities. It was the second straight year that a record was set under Biden, according to internal Border Patrol data.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after visiting the border last week in Arizona that the cartels are controlling a majority of the border. 

"What's different," McCarthy said last week, "is what's coming across here ... It's controlled by the cartels. The individuals who cross illegally on this border ... come in camouflaged outfits."

Blackwell urged GOP leaders to speak out against a border crisis he warns is a threat to national sovereignty. 

"We cannot be part of the controlled opposition," he said. "We in fact have to speak out against this nonsense of destroying our nation state, destroying citizenship, and creating an environment where every city in this country is a border city."

The DEA and other federal agencies have warned that cartels have used the insecure border to turn human smuggling into a multibillion dollar a year business and then used the proceeds to ramp up the production of fentanyl that has poisoned hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years.