Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has been deployed to the southern border as a member of the Air National Guard four times now, and says he’s never seen more drug smuggling and human trafficking than he did on his most recent deployment this month.

“There were a lot more drugs. You’d see people drop bundles,” the Illinois Republican told the Washington Examiner. He was referring to large bags of narcotics that had been carried from Mexico and dropped from planes flying over Arizona or by groups on foot for the next smuggler to move further north.

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Kinzinger, a lieutenant colonel with the Wisconsin National Guard, said even though large groups of families and children have been arriving in recent months, he observed more people who were trying to avoid detection. .. . .

“What I saw was a lot more evidence of human trafficking,” he said. “I saw a lot more people run than I’ve ever seen, which is interesting. Two out of five times when Border Patrol comes up on a group, they surrender. Three out of five, they do what you call a bomb burst.”

He explained that a “bomb burst” is when the group’s guide, dubbed the “coyote,” runs and abandons the people who had either paid thousands to be escorted into the U.S. or were human “mules” and are carrying backpacks of drugs.

Kinzinger flew the RC-26 reconnaissance surveillance plane during his two-week deployment. He spent five hours at a time with Border Patrol agents as they flew around remote areas of southern Arizona looking for human activity on the surveillance and reconnaissance missions. . . . .

He also said the people they encountered were not families or groups of minors seeking out agents — most were actively avoiding being caught. Many wore camouflage-print clothing from head to toe and even tied pieces of carpet to the bottoms of their shoes to avoid leaving tracks in the sand.

Kinzinger said he saw a lot of people in the mountains, which some have claimed serve as walls that make it harder to enter the United States. He disagreed and said while typical illegal crossers will not be trafficked into the U.S. through these treacherous mountainous areas, they are popular spots for cartels to station “scouts,” or people paid to watch for law enforcement and troops in vehicles, on foot, or in the skies. (Excerpted from The Washington Examiner.)