Weaponized immigration began in 1979 with the Mariel Boatlift organized by Fidel Castro of Cuba. Hostile foreign powers took notice and have since perfected the strategy.
That’s the conclusion of five-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer in his latest book, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. Schweizer joined the “Newt’s World podcast,” hosted by former House Speaker and history professor Newt Gingrich, to discuss how immigration has been turned into a weapon by America’s adversaries.
Gingrich asks first about the Mariel boatlift, a 1980 event in which Cuba’s Marxist dictator Fidel Castro seeded migrants fleeing from Cuba with criminals, intelligence officers, criminal gangs, and psychopaths.
“As I recount in the book,” Schweizer answered, “Jimmy Carter announced that he was going to welcome them with open arms, to which Fidel Castro retorted that ‘I’m going to fill his arms with [human excrement].’ I won’t use the word that Castro used.”
A later US government study would conclude that the three most successful attacks against the United States in our history were 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Mariel boatlift.
“After the 9/11 attack, we destroyed al-Qaeda. After the Pearl Harbor attack, we destroyed the Japanese empire,” Schweizer said.
“But after the Mariel boatlift… Nothing.”
Gingrich recalled, “I remember this. I was a freshman in Congress and it was a big factor in defeating Bill Clinton for re-election as governor because a number of those people ended up in a prison in Arkansas, and Arkansans were just furious,” he said. “I think this is so seminal.”
Schweizer goes on to say that during that summer of 1980, Castro went to Managua, Nicaragua and met with Daniel Ortega, who had been in power for basically a year, and with other leftist radicals from Latin America as well, including Lula de Silva (Lula), who is today the President of Brazil. Castro boasted to them of the great success he was having in the weaponization of immigration.
“What’s interesting, I think, is that both Daniel Ortega and Lula would figure very large in what happened under Joe Biden,” Schweizer told Gingrich. Ortega’s Sandinista government in 2020 helped create a pipeline to lure migrants from as far away as Africa. “Ortega created this stepping stone where it’s estimated maybe a million and a half people from around the world flew to Managua and then would walk up and cross the American border,” Schweizer writes in his book.
Gingrich shifts to the actions of the Mexicans. “One of the points you make is there are now more than fifty consulates of Mexico scattered across the United States. To what extent is this a conscious Mexican strategy to try to infiltrate the American system?” Gingrich asked.
“I think it is a conscious effort. I’ll tell you that one of the most startling things in my research that I ran across were dozens of statements from senior Mexican officials about how they view mass migration.” He gives several examples.
- From a December 2024 report prepared by a senior aide to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum: “We already know that the Mexican population in the United States reaches 39.9 million. We Mexicans are reclaiming our territory.”
- A senior Mexican senator named Salgado, who sits on the country’s national defense committee and is a Morena Party official as well, said, “Mexicans are in our territory of California, Nevada, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. We’re going to take back the territory that was stolen from us.”
“When I first ran across these quotes I thought, this is just bravado, making exaggerated claims,” Schweizer told Gingrich. “But when you look at the infrastructure that Mexico has in the United States and how they’re using that infrastructure, it’s very clear that they are already exerting elements of sovereignty within the borders of the United States.”
“One of the things I discovered is that Mexico has in more than a dozen senators and members of the Chamber of Deputies (their Congress) elected Mexican officials who live inside the United States,” Schweizer continued. “Why do they live inside the United States? Because their job is to represent Mexicans living in our borders before the Mexican Parliament. That, to me, is a clear intrusion into our sovereignty, and I think is part of this effort to reclaim the United States.”
As Gingrich noted, Mexico has 53 consulates scattered around US cities. Schweizer adds for comparison that the United Kingdom has 6 US consulates and China has just 7.
“What I discovered is that these consulates, in addition to stamping visas, are involved in domestic partisan politics in the United States. They’re actively working to prevent Trump from achieving his objectives. They worked to try to prevent his election in 2024, and there’s evidence that these consular officials are involved in anti-ICE protests,” Schweizer said. “So, Mexico very clearly has taken steps to try to turn migrants in the United States into a political force that can be beneficial to what they call ‘Greater Mexico.’”
After a break, Gingrich asked Schweizer, “To what extent did Biden dramatically worsen the situation?”
“A couple of ways. The first thing Biden did after he took office was he opened the borders. He instructed border patrol to not prevent people from entering the country,” Schweizer said. “Days after that, the Mexican Senate and the Chamber of Deputies passed a series of bills that they knew would heighten the flood of people coming up to the border, and when Biden came in, he allowed them in. So the Biden policies were absolutely key in opening up the floodgates.”
