To Fight Crime, Fight Crime

Oh, how do we fight crime when it originates across our border? And, are we fighting it more than hardly at all?


Are we not told the Mexican cartels have become the greatest organized crime threat the U.S. has? That's not the Mafia, and its not the Crips and Bloods. It is said, the Mexican cartels now have a presence in about 250 of our cities.

And, what are we doing about it?

Are we stopping illegal immigrants at the border, and escorting them back to where they came from? Many of them -- maybe most -- are no more than laborers. Some are farmers. What does stopping farm laborers have to do with stopping crime? You will never stop crime if you don't know the difference between it and immigration. You will never adequately address a crime problem if you give it no more than immigration answers.

If crime in Mexico is the problem, we need to fight crime in Mexico. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend. Surely (hopefully, anyway) they would be willing to enter an agreement with us, allowing us to bring crime investigators and police right down into Mexico. Yes, this would be most unusual: one country's police force actually operating within the borders of another, but it is what is needed. It is what is required. You cannot expect to fight crime if you do not have the authority to arrest the people committing it. The drug lords are surely laughing at us as they sit safely on the other side of the border, recruiting immigrants to smuggle the drugs across for them, laughing as we turn all our venom on the immigrant, who they just forced -- at point of life -- to do the smuggling.

Yes, the drug lords are sitting on the other side, safe and secure and laughing.

Are we losing the drug war? Of course we are. If we are fighting immigration in the name of fighting crime -- well, we better get a clue.

We have a police force at the border, but what do they do? They escort you back across if they catch you. That's not a lot of heavy-duty crime fighting. Instead, let's have a real police force, one with authority to go right into Mexico and apprehend the criminal. Will Mexico let us come down? How many Mexican citizens in this drug war have been killed since 2006? 35,000? A lot, anyway. Surely they want a solution. Surely, they would accept our help.

And, let's ensure our laws reach into Mexico. Let's write a whole new set of them, if we must. Let's pass a law that says if you raise drugs on foreign soil, we can come after you. Let's have one saying if you coordinate the flow of drugs from an outside country into this country, you are guilty of a crime in America. Let's have a law that says if you recruit someone to smuggle for you, that is a separate crime, and we will add it to the charges against you. And, when the immigrant is free from you and on our side of the border, let's encourage him to turn you in and testify against you.

Instead of the immigrant being used against us, let's make it so he's working for us.

We are quick to enter wars in the Middle East. How much more, then, should we be concerned about what is happening right next door, and spilling over into our country? Let's demand of Mexico that they let us in, and let's go about fighting crime the way it has always been fought: with laws against it, and arrests when the laws are broken.

We have seen how we can be outraged when people come across the border without permission, screaming at them that what they are doing is a crime. Let us, instead, be outraged with the drug lords, who are not coming across, and -- in cases where our laws do not apply to them -- not breaking our laws. Which is the greater harm? If you want crime to be a crime, make a law against it.