If We Confuse Fighting Immigration with Fighting Crime, We are Fools

We should be sending our law enforcement agents right down into Mexico.

I do not need to tell you how serious a problem drugs pouring across our border is. Within the last decade, the Department of Justice suggested the Mexican drug cartels -- not the mafia and not the Cripps and Bloods -- are our foremost organized crime problem. We were told the cartels are stationed in, I believe, 250 of our cities.

We should go right down into Mexico to fight the crime crossing our southern border. How do you fight crime, if you do not go where the criminals are and arrest them and bring them back? Yes, this will require an agreement with Mexico, allowing our investigators and officers to go down there to enforce U.S. laws.


I don't know how many countries have ever had agreements with other countries allowing for such an arrangement. But, if this if this is what circumstances demand -- and it is-- then we should do it. Would Mexico oppose our bringing officers in? It would seem they should welcome it. They have been fighting this problem for decades without winning. Surely having a partner to help them would be something they would embrace.

And, we need laws -- new laws -- specifically addressing the crimes being committed. We have laws against cultivating drugs, but do we have one saying if you raise drugs in a foreign land to send to the U.S., it is a crime? Do we have a law saying if you raise a drug that even potentially could be sold in the U.S., we will come after you? Do we have a law that says if you -- even though you are outside our borders -- direct or coordinate the flow of drugs into the U.S., you are guilty of a U.S. offense? Do we have a law making it a crime to recruit someone to bring drugs across our border? If we did, the immigrant -- who is sometimes forced to become a human pack mule at point of his life -- could finger the drug runners once they crossed into the U.S.

And, our border patrol: It is not much more than a paperwork police. It does nothing but chase people who don't have paperwork. That is not a lot of serious police work getting done, when you weigh it against the severity of chasing those who are importing drugs. 

So, get the agreement with Mexico, allowing our border agents to go right down into that country, empowering them to fight crime, not just people lacking their paperwork.

If we don't know the difference between crime and immigration, we are never going to solve either problem. We will never solve the crime question if we do no more than slapping immigration answers on it. If we just fight immigration, when crime is the real problem, ours will remain a foolhardy effort. 

How come we have such a crime problem from Mexico? It could be because we are so busy fighting immigration, thinking that will do the trick, that we lose sight of the fact that we aren't doing much to fight the crime.