Conservative columnist Ann Coulter and Breitbart Border and Cartel Chronicles Director Brandon Darby spoke on an immigration panel moderated byOANN host Jack Posobiec at Turning Point USAs fifth annual Student Action Summit.

In West Palm Beach, Florida on Friday, the three discussed the various factors involving the crisis on the southern border of theUnited States.

I think what people in Washington, New York, L.A., and San Francisco dont understand is how the country is being so slammed with drugs, said Coulter. Ordinary, sweet little towns out in rural America in fact, I think a lot of the people in L.A., San Francisco, New York, and Washington are happy to know that Americans out in the middle of the country are dying off of overdoses.

Coulter added that 90 percent of the drugs coming into the U.S. are coming from the cartels operating south of the unsecured U.S. border.

This is what Mexico does all the time and the U.S. State Department does this all the time, added Darby. Theyre like, Look, we caught this cartel boss.'

The cartel boss is part of the problem, but the cartel boss is not the problem, he explained.

Theres a cartel boss, and then around that cartel boss, theres this circle of power. Theres politicians, bankers, financiers, lawyers, diplomats those are the real problem. Theyre very happy if you take El Chapo. They dont care, they just replace that part of the pie. They dont care, its this circle. And so, if we cant go after the circle, if we cant go after the people who launder the money, who give the money, who work with them, and meet with them, and give them material support, were never going to actually address the problem.

And if we dont actually address that problem, were never going to do anything about the immigration problem we have in this country, and were going to lose our country, said Darby. So if we want to stop that, yes, we need to change policies here yes, we need to build the wall.

But all of those things are treatments for an underlying problem, he added, and that underlying problem is a nation that is led byparamilitary cartels south of our border. If people from El Salvador wanted to come north to work and Mexico had jobs, they would just stay in Mexico, which would be fine with me thats the kind of thing we have to start looking at.

The Democrats a lot of them think theyre helping other places in the world by allowing everyone to come here, but theyre not helping them, theyre actually hurting those places, and theyre hurting us in the process, said Darby.

Posobiec noted how the U.S. engages in nation-building in other countries but doesnt appear to give Mexico the same attention, despite the nation being so much closer to home.

Howridiculous is it that well do these nation-building projects in Afghanistan, and Botswana, and Burundi, [but] the one where you could at least make the argument that theres a direct benefit to the American citizens is just south of our border? asked Posobiec.

Coulter offered her response.

Its like youre reading my mind, she said. Whenever I see Brandons articles, I want to tweet them out and say, You know, this is two miles from where Americans live. This is 20 miles from where Americans live, not 7,000. Why isnt the media talking about it? I mean, other than Brandon Darby at Breitbart.

Its very, very strange this is happening right on our border, continued Coulter. Its as if you haveISIS andal-Qaeda together, doing their beheadings and mass murders, and itscheek by jowl with us, with no border in between, but no, no, no, tell me whats going on in China. Tell me whats going on in East Timor.

Of course this influences us, added Coulter of the Mexican drug cartels. Why cant we bring the military back and send them to Mexico?

This portion of the panel begins at timecode 08:33 in the video above.

You can follow AlanaMastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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WatchPanel Featuring Ann Coulter, Brandon Darby: A Nation Led by Paramilitary Cartels Is at Our Southern Border - Breitbart