Center Square

Two Canadian groups have called on the Canadian government to strengthen border security, highlighting failures to crack down on drug trafficking and illicit trade.
While the U.S. and Canada “share one of the most successful and mutually beneficial economic and trade relationships in the world,” the groups argue, the transborder economies are facing “a myriad of inter-connected threats relating to illicit trade, from drug trafficking and organized crime to human smuggling and money laundering.”
The International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE) and Council of the Great Lakes Region argue the “biggest cross-border criminal security threats to Canada and the US are the staggering amounts of dirty money that is laundered in both countries by Mexican cartels, Chinese money laundering syndicates, and other transnational criminal organizations that finance greater insecurity and instability.”
The ICAIE has published the first Phase 1 of its Canada Illicit Economies Project outlining national security threats Canadians and Americans now face stemming from decades of lax international security efforts. The report was published after Canadian authorities told The Center Square the U.S.-Canada border is the most secure border in the world after The Center Square reported the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists were being apprehended in the U.S. coming from Canada.
The report highlights key players, regions, trafficking routes and illicit economies.
Transnational criminal organizations operating in Canada
These include Punjabi gangs involved in a billion-dollar drug supply network trafficking heroin and methamphetamines from India to North America and Europe through Canada; the Hells Angels biker gang controlling domestic drug distribution in Canada; and an Iranian crime network, a “silent partner in fentanyl smuggling” in Canada, ICAIE says.
Mexican cartels, Chinese triads and motorcycle gangs manage the illicit drug supply chain; casinos, real estate and underground banking networks are used to launder illicit proceeds, authorities have found.
Key regions and illicit drug trafficking routes
One key illicit drug trafficking hub is the Great Lakes region, covering eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and First Nation lands, according to the report. An $8 trillion-dollar illicit business operates in the region, equivalent to the third largest economy in the world if it were a country, ICAIE says. The criminal network handles more than 50% of U.S.-Canada cross border trade with 25% flowing through the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit and Windsor, ICAIE estimates.
Five of the top 10 U.S. land ports are located in the region. The three largest by volume are Detroit and Port Huron Michigan and Buffalo-Niagara Falls, New York. ICAIE also points to a human smuggling route through the Akwesasne First Nation, which has been grappling with cartel crime, The Center Square reported.
First Nation tribes are on the front lines of U.S.-Canada border crimes, with Texas sheriffs and others proposing a solution, The Center Square exclusively reported.
The ICAIE also notes that the greatest number of illegal border crossers coming from Canada to the U.S. were apprehended by U.S. immigration officials in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Swanton Sector in Vermont and upstate New York, which The Center Square has reported for years. It also notes that the majority of illicit drugs seized at the U.S.-Canada border were by U.S. authorities in the CBP Buffalo, Detroit and Swanton sectors coming from Canada, The Center Square has also reported for years.
Mexican cartels are also smuggling cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into Canada from the U.S., ICAIE says, primarily through Vancouver and Montreal. Smugglers are using ecommerce, postal services and air cargo as well as commercial and private vehicles, authorities have found. Border Patrol is also apprehending Mexican human smugglers in the region, The Center Square reported.
Underground illicit economies
The “financial backbone of the drug trade” is a Chinese organized crime syndicate, referred to as the Chinese triad, ICAIE says. The syndicate is known for drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking and expansive money laundering operations. Vancouver and Toronto are the primary hubs of Chinese illicit operations in Canada, ICAIE notes. In the U.S., Sinaloa Cartel Chinese-linked money launderers have been arrested in California and in Texas, with operations spanning nationwide, The Center Square reported.
The ICAIE says it couldn’t obtain official data from Canadian authorities about the size and scale of the illicit drug trade in Canada. Instead, it cites U.S. State Department reports estimating billions of dollars are laundered every year in Canada.
ICAIE’s executive director David Luna concludes, “Canada has become a safe zone for the world’s most notorious crime groups and threat networks. It is not merely a consumer of illicit goods and contraband, but increasingly serves as a hub of illicit trade, production and distribution of illicit goods, an exporter of such contraband, and a money laundering safe haven for a potpourri of bad actors and sinister malign networks. Additionally, these illicit activities have a disrupting and destabilizing impact on Canadian political, governance, security, and business structures.
“In fact, across Canada, criminal networks continue to profit handsomely from an array of illicit activities that are endangering the health and safety of its citizens, and are imperiling the country’s national security, threatening global peace, and financing greater insecurity around the world through the criminality of Mexican cartels, Chinese Triads, Iranian-backed illicit finance networks, and state-sponsored malign influence.”

An additional 27 members of Venezuelan transnational criminal organizations, Tren de Aragua and its splinter faction, anti-Tren, have been indicted in New York in an ongoing prosecution of groups the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
Last year, several hundred TdA members were federally indicted, including on terrorism charges for the first time in U.S. history, The Center Square reported. Seventy indictments unsealed in December were brought by U.S. attorneys in five states: Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York and Texas.
Last month, 87 more TdA members were indicted in Nebraska for bank and ATM theft being committed nationwide to further their criminal enterprise, The Center Square reported.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in the Southern District of New York, detailed what he called “horrific crimes” allegedly committed against women.
A newly unsealed indictment lists 38 charges of racketeering, murder, double murder, murder-for-hire, kidnapping, sex trafficking and other offenses. The majority of the 27 defendants charged, 21, were previously charged in another 12-count indictment. Five of the six newly added defendants are in federal custody; one remains at large.
Those charged, all illegally in the U.S., “planned and carried out a series of horrific crimes, including gunpoint robberies, murders, and the exploitation of vulnerable young women through sex trafficking,” Clayton said. “Tren de Aragua is in the business of murder, sex trafficking and intimidation, and they brought that business to New York while being unlawfully present in the United States.” Those charged “exerted ruthless control over sex trafficking victims through intimidation, brutality, and threats of violence against them and their loved ones – leaving lasting trauma in their wake.”
Anti-Tren is nearly exclusively comprised of former TdA members and associates, the DOJ says. They operate throughout New York City but have a heavy presence in the Bronx and Queens as well as in New Jersey, Illinois and Washington, investigators allege.
To expand their territory, Anti-Tren members and associates commit murder, assault and other acts of violence against their own members and TdA members, the DOJ says.
Their criminal enterprise depends on smuggling Venezuelan women and girls, “multadas,” into the U.S. and forcing them into sex trafficking, authorities allege. They’re also trafficking controlled substances, including “tusi,” and committing armed robberies, including of banks, authorities allege.
Those charged threatened to kill the multadas and their families if they didn’t engage in forced sex acts for TdA and anti-Tren, the indictment alleges. They also assaulted, shot and killed those who didn’t comply, and tracked down and kidnapped the women and girls who tried to flee, according to the charges.
TdA and Anti-Tren human smuggling and trafficking involves finding real estate to use as stash houses where victims are held. Victims are transported across the country using weapons and intimidation tactics, authorities say.
Anti-Tren members are also helping associates flee prosecution, providing bail for those who are arrested and intimidating and committing violence against potential witnesses, Clayton’s office says.
The charges describe two defendants shooting to death victims in the Bronx; conspiring to kill others in New York and Florida, shooting anti-Tren members in the leg as a form of gang punishment; committing home invasion robberies at gunpoint in Yonkers and the Bronx; kidnapping and sex trafficking crimes, among others.
Investigators leading the case are from Homeland Security Investigations New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland, and the New York Police Department.
Multiple other law enforcement groups are involved in the investigation, including the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s Office; Aurora Police Department in Aurora, Colorado; U.S. Marshal’s New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force; U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Gang Unit and New York Human Intelligence Division; Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York and Chicago Enforcement and Removal Operations; ATF, FBI, U.S. Marshals in Oregon; CBP-New York; New York City Crime Analysis Center at the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area; NYPD Computer Crimes Unit; King County, Washington Sheriff’s Office; and Seattle Police Department.

A new report released by Alliance for Consumers shows how the American Left has been pushing its agenda through what it calls “lawfare,” enforcing “woke” mandates and policies via courtrooms, outside of the established legislative process.
Executive Director of consumer protection group Alliance for Consumers O.H. Skinner told The Center Square that “the ‘Lawfare in America’ report highlights the new frontier in the fight to impose a woke agenda.”
“The Left has aggressively targeted our classrooms, boardrooms, and even our operating rooms, but this report shows how activists and trial lawyers are now using strategic litigation to capture the judicial system itself, imposing sweeping ideological policies that voters and lawmakers never approved,” Skinner said.
“It is time to end the lawfare and restore the balance of power within the three branches of government,” Skinner said.
Skinner told The Center Square that “strategic litigation campaigns are the driving force behind the Left’s overall plan to reshape American society.”
“The pattern is clear: litigation is being weaponized to achieve outcomes that advocates have been unable to secure through traditional legislative processes,” Skinner said. “And if successful, the consequences would mean the woke agenda winning and sinking in across the country despite repeated ballot box and legislative losses.”
According to Alliance for Consumers’ report, “woke lawfare” going on in American courtrooms often is focused on implementing diversity, equity and inclusion mandates or advancing Environmental, Social, and Governance policy choices in the nation – all through “judicial decree” or “activist- and trial-lawyer-driven lawsuits,” instead of the legislative process.
“The evidence compiled in this report demonstrates that the American legal system is being weaponized for political purposes,” the report said.
The Center Square has covered previous so-called “woke lawfare” cases, such as the suit in which the City and County of Honolulu sued a number of leading energy companies in an attempt to make them financially liable for contributing to climate change.
When asked how lawfare affects the American people, Skinner told The Center Square that “left-wing activists’ goal through woke lawfare is to impose Progressive Lifestyle Choices onto consumers outside the legislative process.”
“If successful, woke lawfare will raise prices for consumers and limit choices for consumers,” Skinner said.
“Consumers deserve goods and services that fit the needs of their families, and to be able to purchase what they want at the stores at reasonable prices, not to live with court-room generated mandatory Progressive Lifestyle Choices,” Skinner said.
CEO of American Energy Institute Jason Isaac said in a statement to The Center Square that “courts were designed to resolve disputes, not to serve as engines for ideological policymaking.”
“This report shows how woke lawfare uses litigation pressure to extract policy concessions that activists could not achieve through elections or legislation,” Isaac said.
“The result is governance by lawsuit, regulation without representation, and lasting policy changes imposed without public consent,” Isaac said.
“That trend poses a serious threat to the rule of law,” Isaac said.
Executive director of consumer advocacy organization Consumers’ Research Will Hild said in a statement to The Center Square that “the Leftist woke machine doesn’t care about consumers, only about power.”
“Woke activists will stop at nothing to force their political agenda onto the American people,” Hild said.

Climate and energy experts have praised President Donald Trump’s recent elimination of former President Barack Obama’s Endangerment Finding, with several noting the freedom the action will bring to the auto industry and others stating this is only a beginning step.
American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac told The Center Square that repealing the Endangerment Finding “for mobile sources is a necessary first step toward correcting course, restoring the Clean Air Act to its proper role, and putting reliable, affordable energy back at the center of federal policy.”
Isaac told The Center Square how “President Obama once said that under his energy policies, electricity prices would ‘necessarily skyrocket.’”
“For many American families and small businesses, that prediction proved accurate,” Isaac said.
“The Endangerment Finding became the legal engine behind regulations that raised energy costs, distorted markets, and made affordability an afterthought,” Isaac said.
The Endangerment Finding was signed in 2009 under Obama’s EPA and declared that certain greenhouse gases threatened public health, including carbon dioxide (CO2).
President of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow Craig Rucker said in a statement to The Center Square that “at its core, the Endangerment Finding defies basic science and common sense.”
“CO2, the odorless, colorless, gas you just exhaled, is essential to life,” Rucker said. “It is what plants rely on for photosynthesis to produce oxygen and food.”
“We are all made of that carbon,” Rucker stated; thus, labeling CO2 “a ‘pollutant’ is absurd, akin to declaring water vapor a threat.”
Rucker said that “a rigorous cost/benefit analysis reveals the folly: trillions in economic costs from climate mandates that yield no meaningful environmental benefits, stifle innovation, jobs, and energy independence and distract from genuine environmental priorities.”
Similar to Rucker, president of the Heartland Institute James Taylor told The Center Square in a statement that the Endangerment Finding defied science.
“CO2 is the gift of life for planet Earth, not a pollutant or a threat to public health and welfare,” Rucker said.
One expert told The Center Square of the freedom rescinding the Endangerment Finding will bring to the auto industry.
President of Truth in Energy & Climate Frank Lasee said in a statement to The Center Square that the EPA’s move is “a clear win for buyers everywhere.”
“This action liberates the auto industry from burdensome emission restrictions and money-losing electric vehicle mandates, allowing manufacturers to build the cars and trucks consumers truly want,” Lasee said.
“President Trump deserves strong applause for this decisive step,” Lasee said.
Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, also noted the victory the EPA’s rescinding brings to the car industry, telling The Center Square in a statement: “Today is a win for car and truck buyers.”.
Repealing the Endangerment Finding is “long overdue and good for the American people,” Burnett said. “Trump should be applauded for taking this action.”
“Now it’s time to strike another blow for affordability and strike while the iron is hot to rescind endangerment for power plants as well,” Burnett said.
Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition Gregory Wrightstone noted that “rescinding the endangerment finding is great but it’s not the ballgame.”
“Not only does the rescission have to stand up in court, it must result in the overturning of the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, where the Court wrongly ruled the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases even though Congress did not expressly authorize it,” Wrightstone said.
“Even if the Trump EPA wins in court with respect to rescinding the endangerment finding, without also overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, the next Democrat-run EPA will simply re-issue the endangerment finding and all the Trump EPA’s great work will have been erased,” Wrightstone said.
Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot, said in a statement to The Center Square that “removing the CO2 Endangerment Finding from our lives will remove the legal basis for the misguided nonsense in the name of climate we’ve had to endure for the last several decades.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday that he and Trump would be repealing the Endangerment Finding in the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

A national taxpayer advocacy group is calling on President Donald Trump and Congress to address the nation’s rising debt, warning that interest payments and long-term spending commitments are putting increasing pressure on the federal budget.
The warning comes after the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal debt held by the public will reach 120% of gross domestic product by 2036. The CBO estimates the federal government will borrow $26 trillion between late 2025 and 2036, pushing public debt to $56 trillion.
Debt currently stands at roughly 101% of GDP and is projected to climb steadily over the next decade.
National Taxpayers Union President Pete Sepp said in a Friday state that the growing debt burden is already hurting Americans.
“Paying for past borrowing is already increasing the cost of living for Americans today,” Sepp said. “The problem compounds by the day. Congress and the President must act to address these structural spending problems before mid-term elections this year.”
As debt rises, so do interest payments. The CBO has warned that higher debt levels increase the risk of fiscal problems and could limit lawmakers’ ability to respond to emergencies or economic downturns. Larger debt loads can also drive up borrowing costs if investors demand higher interest rates.
The CBO report noted that debt measured against the size of the economy would be the highest in American history and more than double the 50-year average of 51% of GDP.
Demographic trends may also add to the pressure. As Baby Boomers continue to retire, the number of Social Security beneficiaries is increasing, along with federal health care spending. Meanwhile, economic forecasts only project modest growth.
Sepp said the core problem is long-term structural imbalance.
“The challenge is not temporary spending spikes or short-term economic conditions,” Sepp said. “The yawning mismatch between long-term commitments and the resources available to finance them grows wider every year. The time to act is now.”
National Taxpayers Union pointed to its recent poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies that found that 89% of registered voters think the country faces an affordability crisis. “The survey also found that 88% believe the $37 trillion national debt will eventually impact them and their families. When asked how to reduce the debt, 54% favored cutting government spending,” NTU said.
“Americans await leadership to identify real and salient solutions to these spending problems,” Sepp said. “They know we cannot afford to keep racking up debt on the nation’s credit card while making interest-only payments anymore.”
Economists and budget analysts have debated how much debt the economy can sustain. Some estimates have suggested risk increases as debt approaches 160% to 200% of GDP. However, the exact tipping point remains uncertain.
Even so, federal projections show continued growth in deficits and debt over the coming decade, increasing pressure on lawmakers to decide whether spending cuts, tax increases, or other fiscal reforms are necessary to stabilize the country’s finances.