In every political campaign (at least the good ones) there is a “book,” outlining the issues the candidate will face, and the arguments and positions the candidate takes. It is so everyone on the campaign is literally on “the same page” when it comes to that issue. I’m not running for office, but over the next several weeks, I will be presenting a series of issues for my “briefing book.”
Reality on the Border – The Briefing Book
Customs authorities at the Port of New York announced the seizure 3200 pounds of cocaine yesterday, the second largest bust of all time. The Columbian cocaine was secreted in a shipping container of dried fruit. Authorities became suspicious when the typical hardware used to secure the container was altered.
Like most illegal drugs entering the United States, this cocaine came in through a legal port. While most drugs enter through the Southern Border, they come through the legal points of entry, hidden in semi-trucks, or cars, or trucks. The “romantic” view of drugs coming in backpacks through the desert, or catapulted over a fence, or through tunnels into suburban homes in San Diego, while true, aren’t the main means of entry.
No wall will prevent these shipments.
What is needed: more detecting equipment, more personnel, more intelligence to interdict attempts to cross the border. What is needed even more: a nationwide effort to reduce the “demand” for drugs. As long as the United States remains the “great marketplace” for drug use there will be a motivation for drug smugglers to find a way to get it here. And with stronger and more dangerous drugs being imported, the consequences of drug overdose are deadly. It is likely that had the New York cocaine gotten into the market, it would have been cut with Fentanyl to make it more potent (Fentanyl is cheap, making the 3200 pounds of cocaine go farther.) This means that potential cocaine users wouldn’t know that they were inhaling Fentanyl as well.
Does this mean legalization and regulation of now “illegal” drugs is the answer, as some European nations have done (Portugal, Germany, Netherlands?) That is one solution (not the only one) for removing the profit incentive for drug smuggling. Getting rid of the profit is the only real solution to long-term drug control.
President Trump has recently quoted the following Customs and Border Patrol figures:
In February, 66,450 people were apprehended between ports of entry on the Southwest Border, compared with 47,986 in the month of January and 50,749 in December. In FY18, a total of 396,579 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our Southwest Border. (Customs and Border Patrol Website)
He uses this increase as “validation” for his plan to build a wall on the Southern Border.
What this statistic fails to mention, is that the Customs and Border Patrol have intentionally slowed the process of “legal” border crossing. In the past, Presidents have met migration surges with increases in personnel at the border to process asylum seekers. Lawyers, judges, and others needed to make asylum decisions were rushed to help move migrants through the system, either to gain asylum, or return back across the border.
With the current increase in migrants from Central America, the President has actually slowed the legal processes. The lines forming at the border are extremely long, with only a few daily being allowed entry into the asylum process (this may well be a violation of treaty and international law.) The inexorable pressure on all of those migrants stuck in the Mexican border towns, is making crossing the border illegally a more acceptable alternative. Surprise: the number of illegal entries is going up, and the number of family groups trying to make the trek through the wilderness to the United States is increasing as well. The President has established policies that are causing the problem. He has gotten his self-fulfilling prophecy; and created a “crisis” he needed to back his emergency declaration.
The answer isn’t a wall. The long-term answer isn’t even more personnel to the border. The response needs to be to the initial problem, the reason that all of these migrants have chosen to risk their families on the thousand-mile trek to the US border. Addressing the problems in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras; poverty, crime, and political oppression; is the answer. Until those problems are resolved, no amount of walls, or border personnel, will be able to prevent folks from trying to improve their lives, a very American thing to do.
And the final issue: the President’s claim that undocumented migrants are responsible for increasing crime. The President has used “Angel families” to emphasize his claim, the surviving family members of individuals murdered by undocumented migrants. And there is no question that those “Angels” have lost a loved one, and are incredibly sympathetic.
Here’s the fact: 100% of undocumented aliens have committed a crime – they are undocumented. That doesn’t make them dangerous criminals, it makes them violators of US citizenship and immigration laws. When that factor is accounted for, undocumented criminal rates are actually lower than the surrounding “legal” population.
With that in mind, the statistic about the percentage of undocumented persons in the Federal Prison system makes more sense. It is estimated that undocumented aliens represents one in thirty in the US population, but the one in six in the Federal prison population. That statistic has been used to trumpet the “dangers” that must be addressed by a wall at the border. But again, as crossing the border is a Federal offense, many of those in the Federal prison population are being held for illegal crossing and related crimes.
There is no such number as an “acceptable” number of violent crimes, and no one can deny the pain of the “Angel families.” But, when comparisons are made between “apples and apples,” crime rates minus the “crime” of being undocumented, there is no greater criminality of the undocumented over “regular” citizens, and in fact, they commit fewer violent crimes.
A Wall is expensive, estimated at over $30 billion. A wall is disruptive, to the private property owners on the border and to the sensitive environment along many parts of the border (Big Bend National Park area being only one.) If the United States is going to spend that kind of money, and disrupt so much of the border life, it better be for a real reason, one that would make a difference.
“Build the Wall” is a great campaign slogan, and makes for loud cheers and chants in political pep rallies. But it is a simple answer, and like most oversimplifications, won’t solve the complex of problems at the border.
