SAN DIEGO, CA — Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance vowed that the Trump administration would get tough on social media companies, which have become hotbeds for cartel recruitment — warning that the tech giants will have “hell to pay” if they don’t crack down.

Vance (R-Ohio) blasted the platforms for “getting rich by actually facilitating some really, really bad stuff” in a visit to the US-Mexico border in San Diego Friday.

He pledged that if former President Donald Trump were elected in November, the Trump-Vance team would sharpen the Department of Justice’s teeth to go after social media companies that don’t do enough to stop it.

“If you’re not willing to use the power of law enforcement to tell these social media companies they have to stop, they have to stop facilitating drug trafficking and sex trafficking, then you’re not fit to be a leader of this country,” Vance told The Post.

“We certainly believe that if the Department of Justice applied appropriate pressure on these social media companies they could behave a lot better and if they don’t there’s gonna be hell to pay,” he continued.

“It is ridiculous that you have American businesses facilitating drug trafficking and sex trafficking.”

Cartels have been turning to social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat to lure US citizens into the criminal world of human smuggling — including teenagers — with the promise of substantial financial rewards to pick illegal migrants up from the border.

“It is 100% Uber for the cartels,” Chris Oletsky, a 20-year Marine veteran who now works for the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona, told CBS.

“We have over a hundred juveniles in the last 18 months that we’ve apprehended in this county smuggling, all the way to the age of 13 and 12 years of age down here, driving grandma’s car, a friend’s car, or mom and dad’s car down here, and it’s social media,” County Sheriff Mark Dannels also told the outlet.

As a result, cartels have profited to the tune of $13 billion a year as part of their illegal human cargo trade, according to the New York Times.

The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office busted a pair of baby-faced teens in November for allegedly smuggling migrants over the US-Mexico border.

Eli LaClaire, 19, and Landon Vert, 18, were arrested after authorities pulled them over and discovered five undocumented migrants stowed in their car.

“They’re recruited through social [like] WhatsApp and TikTok,” Cochise Country Sheriff’s office representative Carol Kapas told The Post at the time.

“It’s cartel members and cartel organizations that are targeting anybody, specifically, gearing towards teens wanting money, if they can make a quick buck.”

Kapas said their office has seen people “from all over the United States” being lured in with the promise of up to $3,000 a head.

“Even from Georgia, New York, Washington State, Virginia, Florida. We had somebody who came from California, flew into Phoenix, rented the biggest vehicle that he could find, came down here and got caught,” she said.

Vance’s visit marks his second trip to the border since Trump named him as his running mate.

His first trip took place last month in Arizona’s Tucson sector.

Under the Biden administration, more than 1.7 million migrant gotaways are known to have snuck across the border, according to Fox News.

The number of migrants evading arrest more than doubled from fiscal year 2021, which ran from Oct. 1 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021, when there were 387,398 gotaways compared to 136,808 in 2020.