Pointing out that politics has a strong penchant for non-issues is as accurate as indication that there are no non-issues in politics as the two statements are two sides of the same political coin from a cause and effect perspective respectively. An accurate case in point is the US 2016 elections that seem poised to pit Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump is a businessman who recently had a meteoric rise in politics after claiming that when elected president, he would champion the building of a wall across the border between the US and the United Mexican States (Mexico).
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton only rose to political prominence when she vehemently defended her husband from an impeachment that was fueled by an non-issue that the TV series Scandal’s character Olivia Pope defined as ‘a cigar that has been to interesting places and a semen stained dress’. From an effect perspective however, these two non-issues have created the two main contenders for president of the United States. In similar manner, the US southern border is a practical non-issue that can as easily be transformed into a political behemoth (Snider, 2014).
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From a historical perspective, at the advent of the United States of America through the Declaration of Independence, the entire southern border creating so much contention today did not exists as the southernmost state was Georgia which bordered what is now Florida and every single state was connected to the eastern seaboard. Through colonization, inheritance, and war, the US spread both South and West culminating in what it was and inheriting along the way what now makes the southern border, a bigger chunk of which borders Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico (Dinan, 2016).
It therefore follows that most of the lands in either side of the US-Mexican borders share a common past and ancestry and have always freely traded and interacted, something they would still prefer to do if accorded the chance. A good example being the Mexican small town of Jacume whose populace have always freely interacted with their family and friends in the Californian town of Jacumba: this is just an example of many other similarly related towns and neighborhoods spreading from the Pacific Ocean to the aforesaid Gulf of Mexico where communities have interacted for centuries (Delano, 2016).
It is also worthy of notice that the main issues that create the contention regarding the aforesaid borders have little if anything to do with the communities that live around the borders; the main items of concern to wit illegal immigration, illicit trafficking of drugs, humans and illegal weapons are occasioned by people who come from much deeper within the Mexican interior and other far flung places in Central and South America, a good example being Colombia that highly contributes to the organized crime, weapons and drug problems (Dinan, 2016). Erstwhile, these people had been using divergent means of conducting their criminal activities including air transport but after the infamous 11 th September, 2011 terrorist attacks, a lot overwhelming security measures were installed in all air transport facilities hence the preference for using the long and porous southern border for the aforesaid criminal activities (Obama, 2010; Dinan, 2016).
This does not mean that the southern border is lacking in security apparatus, on the contrary, it is one of the most manned international boundaries in the world perhaps only coming second to the demilitarized zone between the North and South Korea and the one between the eternal belligerents India and Pakistan whose armies take potshots at each other from across their borders on almost a daily basis perchance just to remind one another that they are still at war (Delano, 2016). Further, a large cross-section of the border has also been fenced off with the aforesaid towns of Jacume and Jacumba which used to be a few minutes-walk from each other have now been fenced off to the extent that it takes over 2 hours-drive to circumnavigate the barriers from one of these neighboring towns to the other (Root, 2016).
Even in the desert areas where there are few or no inhabitants, millions of dollars in state of the art surveillance equipment supported by helicopters and drones patrol this areas on a 24 hour basis, yet the criminal activities seemingly continued almost unabated keeping alive the political nightmare of the southern border (Delano, 2016). The use of brawn and even sophisticated force has clearly failed which calls for a change of tact. Instead of fighting against the criminals, a new stratagem of fighting from amongst them must be employed.
Currently, the aforesaid political issue has become a behemoth especialy in light of it having been made one of the clarion calls for the presumed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Any solution to this problem must therefore be considered above all from a political perspective by inter alia transforming the inflammatory nature of the debate so as to focus it on issues as well as to clarify the issues from the wrong to the right ones and finally to place emphasis on the right issues premised on priorities (Root, 2016).
The first political solution is to clarify the issues in the minds of the populace in general and the voters in particular. The hyped up scenario has created the impression within the entire nation that the southern border is so porous that Columbian drug lords can cross back and forth carrying willing and unwilling illegal immigrants, drugs by the ton and assault weapons while applying the Colombian necktie to anyone who stands in their way, or that the Mexican drug lords who have created rogue governments in some parts of their country where even the military cannot penetrate are doing the same in the United States (Root, 2016).
The actual truth is that the war of criminal activities being conducted within the southern border is more won than lost with criminals having an increasingly difficult time carrying out their criminal activities across the said border either by land or by water. Unfortunately, the few bad news are augmented in the media even as the good news gets diminished both in volume and value. Propaganda should therefore be the first battlefront in this endeavor. A genuine effort should be undertaken to let the US populace know that the situation is not out of hand and that everything possible is being done to alleviate the problem. This act will generate the necessary goodwill to enable the commencement of more substantial procedures.
The second step would be to separate issues; currently, the security and crime issue relating with the southern border has been overtaken by the more emotional but less substantial issue of illegal immigration and its consequences such as unemployment and petty crime (Root, 2016). This emotional and political issues have taken center stage and occasioned the sidelining of the more substantial issues such as human, weapons and drug trafficking as well as organized crime. The necessary steps to handle these issues are going to take time, be time consuming and incorporate sacrifices whose making will only be possible when the populace focuses on the right thing. Seeming to do the right thing in politics is as vital as doing the right thing itself.
The third step is separating friends from foes; the current political trend seemingly throws out both the baby and the bathwater by considering that everyone on the other side of the southern border is an enemy and part of the problem which is definitely a fallacy either generated by disinformation or circumspectly created for political expediency (Ghaddar, 2010). It is a manifest impossibility to win the cross border crime war without allies on the other side. The first formula of separating friend from foes is the simplest and entails literally separating the good guys (normal Mexican Citizenry) and the bad guys (criminal elements) (Snider, 2014).
However, whether considered good or bad, an exception should be made to enable a cordial relationship between the US and the Federal Government of Mexico as well as the border state governments (Obama, 2010). The current shenanigan about making a sovereign government pay for a wall built by the American government should therefore be treated with the contempt it deserves and discarded with due apologies to the Mexican government. A genuine effort should be made to incorporate the Mexican law enforcement as vital partners in this war on southern border related crime (Obama, 2010).
The good guys should be befriended and treated in a manner to enable the creation of an alliance between them and the American border law enforcement authorities. Even when they do not help in any way, their neutrality will go a long way in assisting the way against the aforesaid border related crimes. However, with a little motivation, a few of them can be convinced to help even if it is either as informers or informal security consultants as such magnitude of crime cannot happen in the border town without the local population condoning it (Ghaddar, 2010). The local population can also accept into their ranks undercover law enforcement agents who will go a long way in gathering information of the ways and means employed by the criminal cartels (Snider, 2014).
The second formula of separating friend from foe is identifying the criminal elements that can be rehabilitated and transformed to work alongside law enforcement agencies in the fight against this cross border crimes (Ghaddar, 2010). As earlier indicated, the section of crime has been able to overcome the brawn and sophisticated force of the US border control authorities, getting as much information about the criminal organizations is vital to winning the war against them and this can only be done by working together with those who have intimate information of how the criminal operations are undertaken and which conduits are used both within and without the borders (Snider, 2014).
The final formula, and the most uncomfortable one is working with actual criminals using pretend undercover criminals under the philosophy that wars can be won by losing battles in a circumspect fashion. Most undercover law enforcement agents have missions that involve gathering evidence, breaking up rime rings and prosecuting those nabbed. A new formula where the undercover law enforcement will actually work alongside and to the benefit of criminals organizations with a view of both learning as much as possible about the criminal organizations but also creating formulas for either convincing the criminal cartel players to move to less and less criminal activities. If the criminal organizations realize (seemingly by themselves) that doing legitimate trade is may create better overheads than crime, organized criminal activities may be eliminated without the necessity for violence (Snider, 2014).
For the hardened criminals that practice crime for sadistic reasons, a stratagem that incorporates the use of criminal forces against one another in order to finish the craft as opposed to eliminating the players should be employed with circumspectly to reduce and/or eliminate collateral damage. As the adage goes, the devil is in the details, some of these operations are so sensitive and prone to misunderstanding thus a strict need to know policy must be implemented both for the success of the operations and for political expediency (Snider, 2014).
Billions of dollars are expended by the federal and state governments to combat crimes relating to the southern borders as well as deal with the local consequences of the aforesaid crimes thus a successful effort to combat the same would amount to a mammoth political victory for any government that would be able to substantively reduce or even eliminate these crimes. A combination of the efforts already being implemented by law enforcement authorities alongside the measures outlined herein above will go a long way in reducing and finally eliminating the menace occasioned by these criminal activities.
References
Delano, J. W. (2016). This is what the U.S.-Mexico border wall actually looks like . Retrieved from <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160304-us-mexico-border-fence-wall-photos-immigration/>
Dinan, S. (2016). Agents say just 40 percent of U.S.-Mexico border under control. Retrieved from <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/9/20-pct-illegals-caught-border-have-criminal-record/>
Ghaddar, S., Brown, C. J., Pagán, J. A. & Díaz, V. (2010). Acculturation and healthy lifestyle habits among Hispanics in United States-Mexico border communities. Pan American Journal of Public Health, 28 (3), 190-197
Obama, B. H. (2010). Declaration by the government of the United States of America and the government of the United Mexican States concerning twenty-first century border management. Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1.
Root, J. (2016). “ Criminal aliens” flashpoint of border security debate. Retrieved <https://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/08/nation-grapples-immigration-criminals/>
Snider, J. R. (2014). U.S. Southern Border Security: Analysis, Recommendations, and Collaborative Mechanisms. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc
