U.S. Senator James Lankford is joining a bi-partisan effort to hold social media companies like Facebook and YouTube accountable for ads which recruit at-risk youth to help facilitate illegal border crossings. Lankford is the lead Republican in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management.
The group of Senators is working on a bill which will establish and implement a national strategy to combat cartels’ recruiting at-risk American youth to help smuggling people and illicit drugs across the border with Mexico. It would create a portal for technology companies to report cartel recruitment efforts in the U.S. to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The federal agency also will analyze how the cartels are using social media.
One of the biggest contentions that Lankford and the other Senators have with social media companies is that they allow cartels to buy advertising on their platforms for recruitment efforts.
“Social media companies like YouTube and Facebook list in their ‘terms of service’ that their platform cannot be used for illegal activities, but then they allow human smugglers to buy ads, promote how to illegally enter the US, and demonstrate how to avoid the US Border Patrol when crossing the border,” said Lankford. “The largest social media companies pick and choose which illegal activities they like and which they do not like, and clearly they like people illegally crossing the US border. Either you block all illegal activity on your platforms or you don’t. Facilitating illegal crossing into the US encourages drug trafficking, dangerous travel along desert roads, and human smuggling. Social media companies may make a profit from selling ads for trafficking and illegal crossings, but human lives are lost and their companies are partners in the crime. This has to stop.”
The other Senators are Senator Kyrstan Sinema, Senator Mark Kelly, and Senator Bill Hagerty.
