Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
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New Report Analyzes Fatal Flaws of U.S. Border-Enforcement Strategy
05 days ago
The federal government’s current approach to border security is dangerously misguided. Border-enforcement resources are directed at what gets smuggled across the border—people, drugs, guns, money—rather than who is doing the smuggling; namely, the transnational criminal organizations based in Mexico which are commonly referred to as the “cartels.” If the U.S. government wants to get serious about enhancing border security, it will begin to systematically dismantle the cartels rather than just seizing the unauthorized immigrants and the contraband they smuggle and arresting a few low-level cartel operatives in the process.
This is the central message of a new report by former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, entitled How to Fix a Broken Border: Disrupting Smuggling at Its Source. The report starts off by noting that when it comes to border security, “the prevailing assumption is that all we need to stop illegal crossings of drugs, people, cash, and guns are more Border Patrol agents, more National Guard troops, and more surveillance and sensors to cover the hundreds of rugged miles between lawful ports of entry.” Indeed, this has been the rationale for building 650 miles of border fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, and for the massive expansion of the Border Patrol since the early 1990s. The Border Patrol now numbers 21,000 agents and has a high-tech arsenal that includes unmanned aerial drones.
Yet, in spite of all the fencing, agents, and technology, cross-border smuggling continues unabated. The reason for this is twofold. First, the cartels that do the smuggling are, as Goddard puts it, “superbly organized, technologically adept, and very well funded.” When it comes to fencing in particular, they “have the capacity to go over, under, around, and even through virtually any physical barrier.” The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that “during fiscal year 2010, there were 4,037 documented and repaired breaches” of border fencing.
Second, the U.S. government is focused on seizing different kinds of contraband—and assigns different kinds to different government agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gets unauthorized immigrants, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) gets illegal drugs, and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) gets illegal guns. Missing from this division of labor is a coordinated assault on the cartels that do the smuggling. This is a losing proposition. As Goddard emphasizes:
Going after the contraband product or smuggled people, as this country has been doing for years, is destined to be an endless chase. The cartels will just regroup and continue operations, learning from their mistakes. If we are serious about stopping the threat on the border, we have to dismantle the criminal organizations that carry the contraband and take away the tools that make them so effective.
What is needed, says Goddard, is a border-defense strategy that is “intelligence driven and multi-level.” It must target both the cartel leadership and the many subcontractors who work for them. And it must target cartel organization from every possible angle:
Whatever makes the cartel organizations strong must be attacked. Their communication systems must be cracked, jammed, and shut down. Their leaders must be identified, arrested, and incarcerated. Most important, the illegal flow of funds across the border into cartel pockets must be disrupted, interrupted, and stopped.
Goddard is incredulous that “this country has hardly lifted a finger to stop over $40 billion a year in cartel funds pouring across the border.” He calls for the Department of the Treasury to become “a full participant in the effort to stop the cartels by cutting off the illegal transfer of funds” that occurs through banks, wire-transfer companies, import-export businesses, and businesses that issue “stored value instruments.” As he points out, the “physical border is irrelevant to the flow of money; it is the virtual border in cyberspace and currency exchanges that must be defended.”
The current border-enforcement strategy is designed to fail. Goddard writes that “pouring even more money and manpower into enforcement on the border will have little impact as long as the criminal organizations remain intact.” He concludes that “only when the smuggling organizations are dismembered will border defense efforts be equal to the threat. Only then can it truthfully be said that the border is ‘secure.’”
Photo by ICE.gov.
Border Patrol to Roll Out New “Get Tough” Policy on Unauthorized Immigrants
02 weeks ago
This month, the U.S. Border Patrol is set to end the practice of sending unauthorized Mexican immigrants back to Mexico without any sort of punishment. As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the Border Patrol believes it now has sufficient resources and personnel “to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches from Texas to San Diego.” This new policy, however, is as misguided as it is ambitious. While protecting our borders is certainly important, the Border Patrol will waste even more resources than it already does on criminalizing unauthorized immigration rather than targeting the dangerous cartels that smuggle unauthorized immigrants into the country. Furthermore, the Border Patrol’s new policy threatens to inundate federal courts and prisons with even more non-violent immigration offenders.
The crux of the Border Patrol’s new policy is a “Consequence Delivery System” which assigns apprehended immigrants to one of seven categories, ranging from first-time border-crossers to individuals with criminal records. Children and the ill will still be returned to their home countries without punitive action, but everyone else will be subject to some sort of penalty. As the AP reports, the consequences “can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico.” This strategy was implemented in the Tucson Sector’s Central Corridor starting on September 5, 2009. The new policy will expand it to the entire border.
As the AP story notes, the success of this policy hinges upon other federal agencies: “Federal prosecutors must agree to take [the] cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.” However, federal courts are already overloaded with immigration offenders. The story points out that the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego has cited limited resources and lack of jail space as the reason behind its decision not to “participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody.” And this is before the new policy is even implemented.
In addition to wasting scarce resources, the Border Patrol’s new policy misses the mark from a border-security standpoint by focusing on all border crossers, the vast majority of whom are not a danger to anyone. As former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard recently wrote, the greatest security risk stems not from border crossers themselves, but from “the criminal organizations that make their crossing possible.” Any border-defense strategy that hopes to succeed must target the cartels that smuggle people and drugs into the United States, and guns and money out of the country. Goddard argues that “the arrest and deportation of those who make it across simply gives the cartels more customers. Heightened border security means the cartels charge more for the trip.”
Moreover, the Border Patrol’s focus on unauthorized immigration in between ports of entry ignores the fact that most smuggling is now occurring at the ports of entry. Goddard writes that “most of the criminal activity has shifted to the border crossings, not the places in between.” Similarly, the Texas Border Coalition argued last month that “the legal border crossings on the U.S. southwestern border have become America’s weakest border security link.” The new Border Patrol policy does nothing to strengthen that link.
The foolishness of the Border Patrol’s new policy was captured well by Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego. She told the AP:
It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families. We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals.
Border security will not be enhanced, and immigrant smuggling will not be stopped, by cracking down on greater numbers of unauthorized immigrants. It is the cartels that are the greatest threat, and the cartels should be the target of our border-enforcement strategy.
Photo by 3hWIT.
Report Reveals Disturbing Truths Behind Border Patrol Transportation Raids
02 months ago
When news broke last month that the Border Patrol would scale back raids on trains and buses near the northern border, the response from Capitol Hill was rather predictable. In a breathless letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fretted that the policy will “entice potential terrorists, drug smugglers, and illegal immigrants to attempt to enter the country.” But as demonstrated by a comprehensive report released by civil rights groups last week on transportation raids in upstate New York, the Border Patrol’s new northern raid policy was long overdue.
As the report makes clear, interrogating passengers on domestic trains and buses not only diverts Border Patrol agents from their primary responsibility—protecting the borders—but has resulted in widespread legal violations against both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. Specifically:
- Though the Border Patrol is charged with intercepting individuals as they attempt to entry the country, most people arrested in transportation raids were not recent entrants—with more than 75% having lived in the United States for at least a year.
- In numerous cases, Border Patrol agents arrested immigrants without “probable cause” to believe they were in the country illegally—a violation of both federal law and the Constitution.
- Border Patrol agents also routinely flouted federal regulations containing the so-called “two-officer rule,” which generally prohibits agents who make an arrest from subsequently determining whether sufficient legal grounds existed to make the arrest.
In a typical raid, Border Patrol agents board a train or bus and ask passengers questions about their immigration status. As the report points out, questioning people in this manner—though technically legal—exploits a somewhat arbitrary distinction created by the Supreme Court. Under the Constitution, law enforcement agents must suspect a person of illegal activity to physically hold them for questioning. But so long as an ordinary person would feel free to ignore an officer’s questions, the Supreme Court has held that police can interrogate whoever they wish, however they wish. Because most people are unaware of their right to ignore questions from law enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents engage in conversations that are “consensual” under the law, even if the people being questioned feel they have no choice but to respond.
The report also notes that the targets of transportation raids are not merely immigrants who are in the country illegally. Instead, and as was also reported earlier this year by the Chronicle of Higher Education, hundreds of international students and scholars have been wrongfully detained—sometimes for days or weeks—after being encountered on trains or buses by Border Patrol agents. In one particularly egregious example, a music student from China was held in detention for three weeks despite possessing valid immigration status.
More broadly, last week’s report adds even more evidence suggesting the Border Patrol routinely fails to respect the rights of noncitizens they encounter. In September, the Arizona-based organization No More Deaths released a report chronicling rampant abuses against migrants in short-term Border Patrol custody, including denial of food, water, and medical services; infliction of physical abuse; failure to return personal property, including money; and detention in overcrowded and non-temperature controlled cells. Of equal concern, agents along other parts of the border have long been accused of intimidating immigrants they encounter into accepting “voluntary” departure rather than have a hearing before an immigration judge, which could lead to relief from deportation.
While the Border Patrol serves an undeniably important function, the conduct of its agents has for too long gone unquestioned. Even assuming the tactics described in last week’s report are no longer in use, the agency remains in sore need of more oversight.
Photo by Professor Bop.
House Hearing, New Report Add to Hysterical Narrative on Border Security
03 months ago
It was clear from the outset that Friday’s Congressional hearing on U.S.-Mexico border security was going to be light on data and heavy on bluster. The tabloid-style title of the hearing said it all: “A Call to Action: Narco-Terrorism’s Threat to the Southern U.S. Border.” Not surprisingly, it proved to be a largely fact-free performance. The stars of the show, which was staged by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management, were two retired generals: Barry McCaffrey, a former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Robert Scales, a former Commandant of the United States Army War College.
McCaffrey and Scales were called before the subcommittee to discuss their recently released report, Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, which was commissioned by the Texas Department of Agriculture and the Texas Department of Public Safety. The report is 182 pages of shrill and alarmist rhetoric which relies upon anecdotes, hearsay, and innuendo to portray the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border as a seething cauldron of violence and anarchy. According to the report, Mexican drug cartels, working in concert with U.S.-based Latino gangs, are trying to create a “sanitary zone” along the U.S. side of the Texas-Mexico border that the cartels can use to escape Mexican law enforcement. As a result, the report says: “Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock.”
This is a rather remarkable claim in light of the actual crime statistics coming out of border regions in the United States. For instance, a July 18 story by USA Today presented the findings of a comprehensive analysis of “crime data reported by more than 1,600 local law enforcement agencies in four states.” This analysis “found that rates of violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border have been falling for years—even before the U.S. security buildup that has included thousands of law enforcement officers and expansion of a massive fence along the border.” Moreover, “U.S. border cities were statistically safer on average than other cities in their states. Those border cities, big and small, have maintained lower crime rates than the national average, which itself has been falling.” Finally, the FBI’s “southwestern offices identified 62 cartel-related kidnapping cases on U.S. soil that involved cartels or illegal immigrants in 2009. That fell to 25 in 2010 and 10 so far in 2011.”
According to McCaffrey and Scales, statistics such as these aren’t valid. Why? Because so many witnesses to violent crimes in border regions are afraid to come forward, and because the federal government misclassifies so many cartel-related crimes. However, the report offers no hard evidence to support this bold claim. Nor does it offer evidence to support the over-the-top conclusion that “criminality spawned in Mexico is spilling over into the United States. Texas is the tactical close combat zone and frontline in this conflict. Texans have been assaulted by cross-border gangs and narco-terrorist activities.” Another witness at the hearing—Sylvia Aguilar, Chief Deputy in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office—described statements such as these as “extreme exaggeration.” That’s the polite way to put it.
A few subcommittee members added to the hyperbole of the hearing with stories of Hezbollah fighters hiking through the deserts of the southwest. But, in fairness, the hearing raised some valuable points during those rare moments when it managed to break free of hysteria—such as the need for U.S. and Mexican authorities to join forces to bring down the drug cartels. And the need to target the guns and money headed into Mexico to the cartels, rather than just the drugs and people coming into the United States. These are points which have been raised by other experts on U.S.-Mexico border issues.
Unfortunately, the hearing was as farcical as the report it showcased. Both abandoned any pretense of balance and objectivity. Both seized upon the most dramatic stories they could find while ignoring the best available evidence. In short, politics at its worst.
Photo by K38 Rescue.
DHS Needs to Target Violent Drug Cartels, Not Immigrants Trying to Reunite with Families
04 months ago
Times have changed along the U.S.-Mexico border. In just a few short years, Mexican drug cartels have taken over the people-smuggling business. Although U.S. border walls and fences have proliferated, they have done nothing to prevent the cartels from moving drugs, human beings, guns, and money back and forth across the border. The combination of heightened U.S. border enforcement and cartel violence has made crossing the border increasingly dangerous. Yet large numbers of unauthorized immigrants who were previously deported from the United States continue to risk their lives by crossing the border in order to reunite with their U.S. families. The Obama Administration’s current enforcement policies treat these family-bound migrants like hardened criminals, while failing to address the real threat to security—the cartels.
This is the picture that emerges from a recent, comprehensive New York Times story about the U.S.-Mexico border. The story highlights a number of facts that are crucial for understanding U.S. border enforcement and immigration policy today:
- Drug cartels are the threat—not the migrants they smuggle. Unauthorized immigrants are often portrayed by anti-immigrant activists as a threat to border security, despite the fact that they are less likely to commit serious crimes or end up behind bars than the native-born. However, the true threats to security are the drug cartels that smuggle unauthorized immigrants into the United States. These are large-scale, exceedingly violent, criminal syndicates that also smuggle drugs into the country, and guns and money into Mexico. As former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard persuasively argues, it is the sprawling collection of cartel sub-contractors that makes illicit entry into the United States possible in this era of border walls and fences. Therefore, “until the cartels are eliminated, the border cannot be considered secure. Period.”
- More unauthorized immigrants are deportees trying to rejoin their U.S. families. The stereotype of the unauthorized immigrant is of the young, single male who journeys northward for a low-wage job picking crops or washing dishes. However, that sort of migration across the border has come to a virtual standstill. There are few jobs to be had in the United States, a growing number of jobs to be had in Mexico, and a dwindling number of potential migrants who want to brave the often-deadly gauntlet of cartel smuggling operations and U.S. border enforcement. As a result, a growing number of unauthorized immigrants are people who have lived in the United States for several years, been deported, and are trying to rejoin their U.S. families.
- U.S. immigration policy treats these family migrants the same as gang members and hardened felons. In August, the Obama Administration announced that it would target its immigration enforcement efforts on dangerous criminals rather than unauthorized workers without criminal records. Nevertheless, standing policy still treats deportees who cross the border again in order to rejoin their families the same as dangerous criminals. This policy defies common sense and runs counter to the spirit of the guidelines released in August.
U.S. border enforcement policies don’t make much sense. In an era of transnational criminal cartels that deal in drugs, guns, money, and human cargo, the U.S. government is more likely to prosecute the human cargo than it is to attack the transnational cartels. At a time when federal authorities are revisiting guidelines as to who should be deported and who should not, deportees trying to reunify with U.S. families are lumped together with individuals who pose a threat to national security. A system this irrational is in dire need of a comprehensive overhaul.
Photo by Braden Gunem.
Experts Challenge Conventional Wisdom on Border Security
04 months ago
No one should be shocked by this election season’s default response to immigration questions, “We must secure the border.” It’s the same tired sound bite as last election cycle. While border security might make for an easy rhetorical punching bag, it seems to be an area the most vocal politicians know the least about and a topic they care little about fixing. If politicians were serious about securing the border, they would be too busy bringing down drug cartels to blame undocumented immigrants for all of our border woes—or so say former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and anthropologist Josiah Heyman in papers released this week.
Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard is tired of watching symbols trump reality along the border. Instead of building bigger walls or dumping more resources into empty enforcement efforts, Goddard wants strategies that address real threats to our border security—drug cartels. In a paper released this week, How to Fix a Broken Border, Goddard outlines border strategies that involve dismantling drug cartels, starting with the money. According to Goddard, the U.S. Department of Treasury needs to go after money launders who move roughly $40 billion a year across the U.S.-Mexican border:
A more effective border strategy starts with the money; the torrent of cash pouring across the border into the cartel pocketbooks. Cartels are, first and foremost, business enterprises. Taking away the profit cripples the organization.
In addition to stemming the flow of cash across the border, Goddard stresses the need to take down cartel bosses and dismantle their criminal organizations:
This country must break down the elaborate coordination required for successful smuggling. Arrest and incarceration of the bosses who coordinate the scouts, manage the money, and purchase the advanced technology will do just that. And we need to send a clear message that it will be extremely hazardous for anyone to take a fallen leader’s place. Such pressure, applied at the same time the cartel money is disrupted, will destroy the criminal organization. Without the organizations, the holes in our border defenses disappear.
University of Texas anthropology professor Josiah Heyman echoes these strategies in another paper released this week, Guns, Drugs and Money: Tackling the Real Threats to Border Security. According to Heyman, the U.S. needs to stop wasting time, money and manpower on undocumented border crossers and start targeting legitimate security threats—organizations who smuggle drugs, money, guns and people across the border.
…security along the southwest border and across the whole nation requires that we focus on the critical role of targeted intelligence—slow, careful, long-term investigative work aimed at specific individuals and networks, focused on guns, money, and terrorism. This differs in crucial ways from the current approach to border security, which is unselective, inefficient, and massive: witness the costly and time-consuming, as well as inhumane, arrest annually of approximately 500,000 unauthorized migrants in the region, none of them terrorists and very few of them dangerous criminals.
Anyone who lives in or near a border town can tell you that building a taller fence and investing yet more resources into chasing undocumented immigrants do nothing to address real threats to our security. Only by focusing enforcement resources on bringing down the cartels responsible for smuggling drugs, guns, money and people across the border can we say that we’re serious about security. Anything less—like conflating undocumented immigrants with crime—is just cheap political pandering to those, as Goddard describes, “whose real intent is not to fix the border, but to stop and reverse all immigration in the United States.”
DHS Detains Unauthorized Immigrants as They Attempt to Leave the U.S.
05 months ago
It is tempting to imagine that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has adopted a kinder and more just approach to its immigration enforcement mission. After all, the department announced in recent days that it will henceforth focus its enforcement efforts on “high priority” immigration cases; that is, those cases involving serious criminals and individuals who are a threat to public safety or national security. While this is a welcome, long overdue announcement, we must keep in mind that there are still DHS enforcement policies in place that are in dire need of repair.
For instance, according to a story in the New York Times earlier this month, U.S. immigration agents stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border have taken to detaining and sometimes arresting unauthorized immigrants as they try to leave the United States and return to Mexico. In other words, after pouring billions of dollars into immigration enforcement programs to make the United States as unwelcoming as possible to unauthorized immigrants, the Obama Administration has decided to make their departure just as difficult and to torment them as they leave. This policy is as nonsensical as it is cruel.
To be fair, the Administration is snaring unauthorized immigrants as it attempts to do what previous administrations have not: stem the flow of drug money and guns from the United States to Mexico, into the waiting arms of drug cartel leaders. But this neither explains nor justifies why immigration agents are arresting immigrants who have no connections to drug money or gun smuggling—and who are leaving the country. As the Times notes, even some vehemently anti-immigrant groups oppose this practice on the grounds that it slows, and perhaps even discourages, the departure of unauthorized immigrants from the country. In a surreal moment last year, the president of the nativist organization Americans for Legal Immigration issued a statement saying that:
“This is about the only situation we would ever advocate that our immigration laws be waived. We want to encourage the illegals to leave America on their own and thus we ask Obama to provide them safe passage out of America.”
When questioned about its illogical policy, the Administration resorts to a generic law-and-order explanation. An anonymous “administration official” told the Times: “We’re not trying to discourage anyone from leaving, but we do want to send the message that there are consequences for breaking immigration laws.”
As Greg Siskind points out in the AILA Leadership Blog: “Bad policies have consequences, as well. Unfortunately, everyone seems to have figured this out but the officials carrying out the bad policy.” Apparently, the Obama Administration doesn’t see the irony of making it hard for unauthorized immigrants to leave the county after expending so much time and effort telling them to leave the country.
Photo by nathangibbs.
Time to Tackle Immigration Now that the Border is More “Secure” Than Ever, Report Says
06 months ago
The U.S.-Mexico border isn’t what it used to be. That is the over-arching theme of a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), entitled Safer than Ever. The report describes the immense buildup in enforcement resources which has occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border since 1993. This buildup has created “a border where the vast majority of attempted entries are identified and a far larger percentage of entrants are apprehended than ever before.” Moreover, the increase in border enforcement has coincided with falling rates of violent crime along the border, and—over the past few years—a dramatic decline in the number of unauthorized immigrants attempting to cross into the United States. In other words, border enforcement is at an historic high and unauthorized immigration is at an historic low. This creates, as the CAP report puts it, “a unique opportunity” to redesign the broken U.S. immigration system and finally confront the fact that 11 million unauthorized immigrants now call the United States home.
The CAP report points out that enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border is worlds away from what it was in the early 1990s. For instance:
- In just the five-year period from Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 to FY 2012, the number of Border Patrol agents has grown from 14,923 to 21,370. Most are stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border.
- In Arizona, where most unauthorized border crossings now take place, there are 5,200 Border Patrol agents, more than 900 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, and more than 130 Air and Marine agents.
- President Obama dispatched 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help spot unauthorized border crossings.
- There are now 300 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Arizona has roughly 60 remote surveillance systems deployed along its border with Mexico.
However, these heightened enforcement measures have been implemented in the absence of reforms that would fix the broken U.S. immigration system which spurs most unauthorized immigration. As a result, the border buildup has had two unintended consequences that have proven to be very deadly:
- As migrants cross the border in more remote (and dangerous) locations, away from heavily fortified areas, more of them are dying. The Border Patrol puts the death toll at 4,375 between 1998 and 2009.
- Since crossing the border is so difficult now, the services of a smuggler are essential in making the journey. This has driven up the fees that smugglers charge and the profits that they make. Profits are so high, in fact, that the Mexican drug cartels—infamous for their violence and ruthlessness—have gotten into the smuggling business and now dominate it.
These unintended consequences notwithstanding, the immense buildup of personnel and resources at the border has undoubtedly contributed to the large decline in apprehensions over the past few years. However, as the CAP report notes, that there are other factors which must be taken into account:
- The severe economic downturn in the United States that began in 2008, which effectively dried up the job market that has long drawn unauthorized immigrants to this country.
- The recent expansion of economic and educational opportunities in Mexico.
- Demographic changes within Mexico; namely, a declining birth rate.
Regardless of which factors have played the biggest role in reducing unauthorized immigration to the United States from Mexico, the fact remains that unauthorized immigration is way down, border enforcement is way up, and now is the time to deal with the 11 million unauthorized immigrants who already live and work here. The CAP report sensibly recommends a legalization program for the unauthorized, as well as more flexible limits on both employment-based and family-based immigration in the future—so that we don’t find ourselves in the same position again 20 years from now.
Photo by jonathan mcintosh.
Arizona’s Latest Border Fence Initiative Yet Another Obstacle to Fighting Crime
06 months ago
BY TERRY GODDARD, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ARIZONA
Over the years, Arizona has seen an exceptional number of frauds, consumer scams and rip offs. Maybe the heat stimulates the flimflam artists, but the sad fact is they come here and discover new and creative ways to take other peoples’ money. As Arizona’s Attorney General for the past eight years, I was dedicated to exposing and prosecuting scams, large and small. Unfortunately, the latest ploy is perpetrated by one of Arizona’s own politicians, state senator Steve Smith, who has developed a new scheme for taking money from well-meaning Americans—building the border fence.
Senator Smith has set up a website asking for private cash contributions to build a border fence, or “The Wall,” on the 82 plus miles of the Arizona border with Mexico he says is not secure. The website lists a lot of Federal failures on the border and never says exactly what we can expect The Wall to do or what it will look like or cost, just that it is “vital to the security of our great nation.” I am not saying that Senator Smith will benefit personally from any contributions, just that The Wall will not do any good securing the border. Deception after all, not enrichment, is the essential element of fraud. The Wall is a fraud.
This permanent construction in the Arizona desert is supposed to keep “drug cartels, violent gangs, an estimated 20 million illegal aliens, and even terrorists” out of our country. These claims would be almost laughable if construction of the Wall didn’t distract this country from actually getting serious about fighting border crime. From the perspective of law enforcement and public security, constructing any part of The Wall will waste valuable time and resources and give folks a false sense of security. The idea that any glowering structure could confound the smuggling efforts of transnational criminal organizations (TCOs)—commonly known as the drug cartels— is just naïve. Drug cartels are extremely organized, are equipped with advanced technology and have vast resources. They have the capacity to go over, under, around and through virtually any barrier. We will only achieve border security when we cut off the flow of money to the cartels, arrest and prosecute their leaders and dismantle their criminal organizations.
The simple fact is, as Janet Napolitano once remarked, “for every 50 foot wall, there is a 51 foot ladder.” Any wall can be defeated by tunneling and the folks living south of this one are among the best hard rock miners in the world. The ground under Nogales Arizona, for example, is honeycombed with tunnels and no one thinks we have found them all. A wall can be flown over and already the drug smugglers’ vehicle of choice is an ultra light aircraft. Besides, no wall has stopped half of today’s undocumented population who crossed into the U.S. legally with valid papers through a port of entry and overstayed their visa. Others, who were smuggled across, came seeking work and would have entered legally if this country had matched its work visas to available jobs—something we still fail to do.
Critical time is wasting. Few think that the courageous Mexican initiative against the cartels will survive the Calderon Administration. This is not the time to get distracted by The Wall. If we are serious about fighting crime along the border, we must put our resources, public and private, into fighting the drug cartels. That is job one. Anything else is just a fraud.
Photo by whiner2.
Thousands of Migrant Kids Trapped Inside the World’s Border Politics
06 months ago
Yolanda had barely made it to the U.S. border after being beaten and raped by smugglers on the route up from El Salvador. When border agents discovered the 16 year old, she was sent to a hospital, stripped and shackled to a bed–just as a precaution, presumably, to ensure she wouldn’t run away.
Yolanda was part of an endless stream of children on the run, attempting to enter the U.S. on their own for work, family or just personal safety. Each year, thousands of these “unaccompanied minors” risk their lives to slip through the gates, and end up falling through the cracks.
According to a 2010 article by Wendy Young and Megan McKenna, of the advocacy coalition Kids in Need of Defense, the unaccompanied youth population spans the scope of global crises: some are simply trying to get out of poverty. Others are displaced by war, or fleeing abuse, female genital mutilation or forced marriage. Some are struggling to escape local gang violence. Government data indicates that most originate from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
The term “unaccompanied” tells only part of their story. Many of these kids seek to reach a parent or relative on the other side of the border. But they must travel alone, exposed to brutal conditions as well as abuse by the coyotes hired to guide them.
While many youth trying to enter from Mexico are ensnared by border police and deported straight away, others enter as undocumented immigrants. They are routed to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them in a disturbingly wide range of settings, from juvenile detention to foster care.
In an assessment of immigration detention in the U.S., the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently reported satisfactory conditions at the two youth facilities it visited, while voicing concern about reports of abuse of children in federal custody. Their main conclusion, however, was that under international principles of children’s rights, migrant and refugee children should not be detained at all except as a last resort.
Despite some significant reforms in recent years, the government’s treatment of unaccompanied youth is not guided by humanitarian precepts, but rather by the logistics of “warehousing” kids until their legal status is resolved. According to a 2009 report by the Women’s Refugee Commission, many unaccompanied children, after braving hell to reach the U.S., are left vulnerable to mistreatment and the crippling loneliness of institutionalization.
While it’s hard to expect the immigration bureaucracy to provide quality child care, the system has tried to make itself more kid friendly in recent years, thanks in part to legal challenges over the treatment of child detainees. But investigations by WRC, which documented Yolanda’s case among others, found that while some children were placed in decent settings like group homes, others were placed in “secure” institutions that treated them essentially like youth offenders.
Children are particularly exposed to harsh treatment when they initially arrive. In some of the interviews conducted by WRC, children describe the degrading conditions they experienced after they were first “caught” at the border:
Border Patrol agents would shout to wake them up at night, calling them dogs, spitting and giving them food the children described as moldy.
Researchers found that children initially detained by ICE authorities generally lacked basic health care and had “no systematic access to legal representation or rights presentations … and often have no guardian or advocate defending their rights or best interest.” That is, they might technically be able to access legal services, but a terrified kid stuck at a detention facility would probably have trouble understanding her basic rights, much less how to locate a free attorney.
She may have some other problems to deal with. It’s not uncommon for kids who are in custody to show signs of trauma, either from their experiences in their home countries or from the more acute hardships of their migration. According to research published in WRC’s 2009 report:
Facility staff estimated that between 30 and 50 percent of children need mental health services. Facilities reported that very high percentages of up to 50 percent of children were on psychiatric medication.
This kind of institutionalization only amplifies the trauma that young people experience trying to reach the U.S. But while countless unaccompanied minors are neglected by the system, many do have ties to American communities. A large portion are in fact eventually released to the care of family members or designated sponsors. However, ICE’s hardline enforcement strategies complicate the process of reconnecting youth with their families. Relatives may be deterred by the fear that ICE agents would “use children as ‘bait’” to lure in undocumented adults. One child’s testimony summed up the irony of the chilling effect of these tactics:
I know that I am allowed to have visitors but I have no one to visit me. My parents don’t have papers so they will not come to get me.
The byzantine legal system makes it harder for unaccompanied migrant children to reunify with family, especially when the parents are undocumented. Children typically have little or no control over how their case is handled, even though they should be able to petition independently for relief before a judge.Though they might qualify for asylum or relief as victims of trafficking, their cases are threatened by the courts’ narrow legal interpretations and general lack of legal help. Certain asylum claims, like being targeted by a gang, are especially hard to prove in court, according to Young and McKenna.
Jennifer Podkul, program officer for the Detention and Asylum Program of the Women’s Refugee Commission, told Colorlines, “The whole crux of it is that these kids are not given attorneys, and so they don’t really have a voice, they don’t really know their options, they don’t know if they have their own claim or not. And that’s probably the biggest problem, and probably the root of this confusion.”
Outside the U.S., youth who migrate alone have just as little hope of finding refuge. In some European countries, unaccompanied migrant children are extremely vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. In Australia, where anti-immigrant anxieties have surged in reaction to an influx of “boat people,” refugee kids are treated as contraband, reports The Australian:
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has signalled his concern at the steady increase in numbers of unaccompanied children arriving in Australia as an “anchor” to secure safe passage for family. Spokeswoman for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Pamela Curr says Immigration has sent letters to 15-year-old refugees in Melbourne informing them that family reunion applications will not be processed within three years.
“This means they will have to stand in line in the humanitarian stream with thousands of others. Everything is now premised on deterrence,” she said.
“Deterrence” may be the endgame, but officials should understand that even the most deplorable conditions wouldn’t stem the flow of desperate migrants fleeing economic devastation, death or torture. And any child who arrives alone isn’t going to get turned around easily.
Not girls like Yolanda, who discovered she was pregnant as the result of getting raped on her way to the border. Her journey was a one-way trip.