It’s widely understood in the United States that Americans should never negotiate with terrorists. That principle may have influenced key foreign policy decisions for decades, but it didn’t faze a Rhode Island public high school assistant principal who emailed her employees to solicit donations for a cartel that escorted an illegal border crosser into the U.S.
“We have a student who came to America with ‘Coyote,’ which is a group that helps people. This group gives you a time frame to make a payment of $5000 dollars to those, who bring them to the state,” Mount Pleasant Assistant Principal Stefani Harvey wrote in an email to teachers last Thursday. “Our student needs our urgent support to raise another $2000 to meet his goal of $5000 by February 1st, 2023.”
At quick glance, Harvey’s email might look like a routine plea to aid a student in need. But read more than a few words into the memo and you’ll see that this fundraiser, marketed as a charitable and humane act, is to send money to the “terrorists” running the border and ruining American lives.
The “Coyote” that escorted a high school-aged migrant to the U.S. is not “a group that helps people,” as Harvey suggests. Coyotes are the smuggling arm of cartels that charge thousands of dollars to illegally escort migrants across their territory and through the U.S.-Mexico border. The $5,000 that this particular cartel member is demanding isn’t a “payment,” as Harvey states, so much as a ransom that comes with
