Ask any American what security concerns President Trump’s executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” is addressing successfully, and the person is sure to mention our border with Mexico.
But the threat isn’t limited to the continental United States. Illegal migration is also a serious problem in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), where many illegal drugs—and immigrants—begin their entry into the states.
As Roberto Vaquero, the Customs and Border Protection director of field operations for Puerto Rico and USVI, has stated, “the consistent application of consequences for individuals found illegally present in the U.S. Virgin Islands is essential to maintaining the integrity of immigration laws and protecting national security.”
Enhanced border security efforts are crucial to deterring national security threats, especially from Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs).
During 1994, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were designated as High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, which is still applicable today. Indeed, in 2023, 956 metric tons of cocaine were transshipped from South America through the Eastern Caribbean region, including the Virgin Islands.
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The USVI is where the “secondary flow” of drugs begins. Venezuela, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic source the two U.S. territories with drugs for consumption or for distribution to the U.S. mainland. This is why they remain concerns and should be given the resources to defend themselves against TCOs.
Unfortunately, it is relatively easy for TCOs to push drugs through the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, because there are 1,000 miles of porous entry points, which limit Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searches on domestic cargo passing through the territory.
A persistent issue in the USVI is illegal immigration of criminal aliens. In 2023, the Virgin Islands Police Department engaged with 627 illegals on the island of St. John. Then-commissioner Ray Martinez quoted a striking statistic saying, “More than 60 percent of the individuals that come in here [are] unknown to us.”
Human trafficking through the USVI is on a far smaller scale than what was seen until very recently on the U.S. border with Mexico, but in many cases involves higher-profile illegal aliens on average, with members of international criminal organizations being trafficked to the U.S. mainland through the territory.
In 2023, police estimated more than 2,000 illegals landed on St. John port from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and South and Central America, plus such far-flung places as Cameroon, Ukraine, and even individuals from “Romanian crime families.”
For example, on Dec. 7, 2022, seven Romanians entered the USVI illegally, including one Florian Muntean, wanted in Spain on an outstanding warrant for murder.
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There needs to be a greater ICE presence in the USVI.
Puerto Rico and the USVI share San Juan’s ICE facilities, but ICE field offices to identify, arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens do not exist in the Virgin Islands.
New detention centers are also needed to deter criminal immigrants from pouring into the U.S. mainland from the islands and to enable law enforcement to detain them and prepare them for deportation.
There is potentially funding available for just such a project in the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The bill provides “$45 billion for adult immigration detention and family residential centers to house more than 10,000 people at any given day in detention centers.”
The U.S. Virgin Islands need to be resourced with greater border patrol and immigration enforcement capabilities that will deter and punish transnational criminal organizations and illegal immigration—not only for the safety of the American citizens of the Virgin Islands, but also for the safety of the U.S. mainland.
