An Appeal to Matheson to Fight Crime

Just sent a version of my appeal to Rep. Jim Matheson, saying:

Rep. Matheson:

'Tis time for doing what I write of here, for the situation has become so troubling that small measures are not enough.

Give us landmark legislation, Jim, to solve our border woes.

The legislation I am suggesting would be popular, both with your constituents and your fellow congressmen, so why not be the person to introduce it?

Instead of immigration reform, let's reform our border patrol, and let's reform our laws dealing with drug crime coming across the border.

I do not need to tell you how serious a problem drugs pouring across our border has become. The Department of Justice suggests the Mexican drug cartels -- not the mafia and not the Cripps and Bloods -- are our foremost organized crime problem. We are told the Mexican cartels have their gang members in 250 of our cities.

Talk suggests Mexico's government might collapse to the cartels. Just talk, perhaps, but then again, the threat is rising.

So serious is the problem, we need to take action. If this were a government in the Middle East that was toppling, would we act? If our security was threatened by something going on in the Middle East, would we act?

Then, shouldn't we act the quicker if the country is our neighbor?

Of course, I am not talking in troops, but I do believe we should send our law enforcement officers into Mexico.

We should go right into that country to fight the crime. If that is where the criminals are, then we must go after them, there. We cannot simply stand on this side of the border, snatching off poor immigrants coming in hopes of a better way of life and suppose we are fighting the drug lords sitting comfortably outside our border and outside our reach. They should be laughing at us for all we are doing. We chase the migrant farm workers who yearn and seek to be Americans? And, that is our solution? If we do not know the difference between crime and immigration, we will never solve either. If we slap immigration answers on crime questions, we cannot hope to adequately address the problem.

If we are to fight crime in Mexico, we will need an agreement with Mexico, allowing our investigators and our officers to go down there to enforce U.S. laws.

Landmark legislation, then, is what is required. I don't know how many countries have ever had such agreements. Maybe this would be a first. I do not know. But, this is what the circumstances demand that we do.

And, most importantly, we need laws -- new laws -- that specifically address the crimes being committed. We have laws against cultivating drugs, but do we have any suggesting if you raise drugs in a foreign land, it is an offense in the USA? Do we have a law saying if you raise a drug that potentially could be sold in the U.S., we will come after you in that foreign land where you are raising it? Do we have a law that says if you direct or coordinate the flow of drugs from outside the U.S. into the U.S., you are guilty of a U.S. offense?

Perhaps most telling, do have a law making it a crime to recruit someone to bring drugs across our border? If we did, the immigrant -- sometimes forced to become a human pack mule at point of life -- could finger the drug runners and serve as a witness for the prosecution.

The crimes are being committed by those living outside the U.S. We need laws addressing that reality, empowering us to go into those countries to bring them to justice for crimes they are committing against American citizens.

If you don't have laws against the crime, and don't have a police agency to go after them, you haven't even begun solve the problem, and are hardly even facing it.

Of our border patrol, much needs to be done. As is, it is not much more than a paperwork police. The officers often do nothing more than escort illegal immigrants back across the border. That is not a heavy lot of police we are getting out of them, despite the fact the southern border is home to some of our most serious crime.

We need to put a real police force in place at the border, one empowered to enforce the new laws we create, one with authorization to go right down into Mexico to investigate drug use and apprehend drug lords.

We also need to ensure the tools we have for fighting crime in the U.S. are in place in Mexico. Do they have an adequate fingerprinting system? Do they have an NCIC-type of record keeping? These too, should be added through the agreement with Mexico.

So, get the agreement with Mexico, get the new legislation enacted, get the tools in place, and transform the border patrol into a real police agency.

Fight crime, not people. More specifically, go after criminals, not those without paperwork.

As I said, if we do not know the difference between crime and immigration, we are never going to solve either. Crime is such a large problem, we better get a clue soon. Deciding whether children should be allowed college educations (the DREAM Act) is not going to solve the problem of all the crime entering the U.S. at our Mexican border.

Let us fight crime where crime is the problem. Let's not pass this off as an immigration issue, for to do so is to ignore and overlook one of the greater threats facing our nation.