Bring reason to border control

As President Donald Trump scrambles to build more border walls and President-elect Joe Biden’s team struggles with the issues of border control, is it possible to step back, identify the real problem and propose solutions?

Here is the situation. Trump has demonized Mexicans, proposed a dramatic expansion of the border wall as a solution and been able to add substantial new construction.

Look, however, at border crossings and the numbers of people entering the U.S. illegally. Of the 24 years between 1983 and 2006, there were only five during which our Border Patrol apprehended fewer than a million migrants — 2000 was the highest year with 1,643,679, but by 2015, when Trump first began raising this issue, the number had dropped to 331,333.

Even though there was a surge beginning in 2018, these were largely women with children from highly violent Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador seeking to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum. They were not attempting to cross illegally.

In regard to those who are coming illegally, their motivation is mostly economic. Keep in mind the minimum wage is Mexico is about $6.50 a day, less than New Mexico’s $9 per hour. Those Mexicans who do cross will send an estimated $39 billion back to Mexico this year, remittances that have an enormous stabilizing impact on their country. For the most part, they work in agriculture and construction, doing work Americans no longer want to do. We could easily reduce the numbers of those crossing illegally with an expanded guestworker program, whereby they could go back and forth legally and on a seasonal basis.

The larger issue is drugs. Unlike migrants working on farms and in construction and then sending their earnings back to Mexico, there is no positive side to drug smuggling. The joint U.S.-Mexico effort to control drugs has just taken an enormous blow, however.

On Oct. 16, U.S. officials arrested Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, a former Army general and defense minister in the Los Angeles airport and charged him with money laundering and drug-related offenses, making him the highest-ranking Mexican figure ever charged. Mexican officials were outraged.

Although the U.S. has long had permission to station Drug Enforcement Agency personnel in Mexico to work cooperatively with their Mexican counterparts on drug-related issues, no one had informed the Mexican side of this pending arrest.

Just a month later, U.S. officials were forced to release Cienfuegos and drop the charges, citing “sensitive and important foreign policy concerns.” What an enormous blow to whatever cooperation and trust existed between Mexican and U.S. drug enforcement officials.

It’s easy to see both points of view. U.S. officials feared sharing their information about Cienfuegos would result in its leaking out and destroying the investigation. Mexican officials were outraged that a prominent citizen of theirs would be arrested in another country without them being informed.

To me, it indicates a need to focus more on drug-related technology and less on the human frailty. This is where outgoing U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small from New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District has shown real leadership. Her focus is on our ports of entry like Santa Teresa or Palomas.

Experts all say ports of entries are where some 90 percent of all illegal drugs come across, not through or around walls. In February, Torres Small’s bill, H.R. 5273, passed the House and would require the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan to scan all vehicles coming through ports of entry. She later introduced the Southwest Border Security Technology Act that would analyze technology needs to “prevent terrorists and instruments of terror” from entering the U.S.

The development of such technology would be a major step forward. Anyone who crosses the border frequently has seen the long lines of huge trucks and knows they can’t be checked adequately with today’s technology.

Border control has for too long been just an emotional and political issue. Isn’t it time now to identify the real problems and come up with rational solutions?

Morgan Smith has been working on the border for the last decade and can be reached at Morgan-smith@comcast.net.