As everyone in America probably knows by now, four Americans were kidnapped last Friday just over the Mexican border. Yesterday, they were found inside Mexico. Tragically, two of the Americans had been killed. 

Fortunately, two were alive and subsequently rescued. Information is still sketchy and I can’t report any more details than this, but here is what I do know: The U.S administration must — and I mean must — take some actions not only to get to the bottom of these killings and kidnappings, but to begin new policies that will prevent this from happening again. 

Here’s what else I know: The Biden administration’s open border policy makes an awful story like this all the more possible. The open border is dominated by the Mexican drug cartels, which most regrettably seem to have bigger armies and more technology than U.S. authorities on our side of the line. 

Here’s what else I know: Mexico’s president, known as AMLO, did cooperate with President Trump for a while, implementing the “Remain in Mexico Policy” to stop illegal immigrants. Nonetheless, AMLO has essentially been unwilling to take any strong action to challenge the cartels. 

As a former American attorney general, William Barr, wrote last week, his stated policy is “hugs not bullets,” and he has effectively shut down counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States. 

Here’s what else I know: In the last two years plus, a lot more than four million illegal immigrants have streamed across the open border. It is a catastrophe that undermines American sovereignty, doing great harm to American citizens, their families, and their businesses.  

It has also done great harm to the illegals, who are spread across the country in various cities and elsewhere — in so many cases with no place to go, no place to stay, and no funding. It is a humanitarian catastrophe. 

There has been no response from the Biden administration, which is in complete denial. 

The president has been near the border for a brief photo op at El Paso. While administration representatives continue to deny the problem, though, no serious plans to solve it have emerged. 

Here’s what else we know: The drug cartels that control the border, and indeed much of Mexico, have engaged in human trafficking, sex trafficking, and drug trafficking, and they dominate the most incredibly lawless part of the Earth anyone could imagine. As I said, these cartels have their own army and war technology. 

Then, of course, what we know is the scourge of fentanyl — whose raw materials are sent to Mexico from China, and then processed in Mexico, and then distributed by the cartels in the United States. 

In a brilliant press conference today, Senator Graham of South Caroline cited facts such as 200 Americans dying every day due to fentanyl overdoses, which he called the equivalent of a new September 11 every two weeks. 

He said 106,000 people last year died of drug overdoses — 70,000 related to fentanyl. The fentanyl problem — again, hitting the U.S. from China and Mexico — is multiplying exponentially. In 2020, 4,791 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the border. The next year, that went up to 11,201 pounds. In 2022, seizures were scored at 14,700 pounds.  

Fentanyl is a poisonous weapon of mass destruction, and authorities really don’t know how much gets inside the U.S. Last night, Senator Blackburn said the Mexican cartels have increased their business to more than $13 billion from roughly $500 million back in 2018. 

Despite all of this, President Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, had the gall, the nerve, to make this statement yesterday: “Because of the work that this president has done, because of what we’ve done specifically on fentanyl at the border, it’s at historic lows, historic levels that have been able to record a number of personnel working to secure the border because of what we’ve been able to do, seizing that fentanyl. We’ve done it in a historic way. That’s because of what this president has done.” 

This is the most incredible flat-out lie, and, frankly, men and women of common sense know it.  

A week ago, Mr. Barr wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that it was time to step up the engagement of the U.S. military in pursuit of the drug-running Mexican cartels. Mr. Graham put it this way in his presser: “So we’re going to do two things today. We’re going to introduce legislation in the coming days and trying to make it bipartisan to designate these groups, foreign terrorist organizations under U.S. law, to open up more capability to go after them and their co-conspirators all over the world. Secondly, we’re going to introduce an authorization to use military force where the United States military can go in and destroy these labs and destroy these networks, if possible.” 

There are a lot of moving parts to this story. 

There’s the tragic death of American citizens. There’s the China card. There’s the Mexican government looking the other way, and of course there’s the open border that makes this catastrophe possible. 

The issues include American national security, health security, sovereignty, law and order, and frankly the lack of protection of human beings on both sides of the unguarded border. 

Let me remind that March 8, 2023, is the 40th anniversary of my former boss’s powerful “Evil Empire” speech — which really was the beginning of the end of Soviet communism. Peace through strength, President Reagan preached.  

Regrettably, I would suggest to you that today we have neither peace nor strength.  

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.