2/3/23
By Josh Rubin
We are watching a new season of the anti-immigrant crowd grinding fresh red meat, this time liberally laced with fentanyl hysteria. Although all signs point to a large business that involves using vehicles to move the drug through our ports of entry, those with skin in this game like to point to men and women and children with naught but the meager goods they carry as the purveyors of a potent drug that is the latest moneymaker for an international consortium.
To start with the obvious: migrants traveling sometimes thousands of miles to settle in a new country are NOT the masterminds of a billion-dollar industry. Rather, the players are manufacturers, smugglers, distributors and facilitators. Much of the currency, besides the drugs themselves and actual currency, is guns and ammo and other weaponry.
Money and guns flow into Mexico from the US. Fentanyl flows from the south, across the border, into the US. Most, from all the evidence, passes through what are called Ports of Entry. At these ports, people and vehicles are subject to searches. In other words, you could stop most the the drug smuggling by inspecting luggage and vehicles and seizing it at these ports. Despite reports of seizures, most of it gets through. Anyone who has been to the border knows why. Very little searching happens. Much more could happen. Why doesn’t it happen?
I can think of two reasons. One, a lot of searching would significantly slow commerce. We do a lot of business with Mexico, don’t we? The second reason is talked about far less, but, believe me, may be quite significant. This: there are people working at the ports that have a hand in the business, who are facilitating the traffic in fentanyl and other contraband. They work for Customs and Border Protection, which along with Border Patrol is not only the largest police force in the world, and the most powerful, but also is in a position to deliberately allow drug traffic into our country.
Didn’t know that? I’m not surprised. Although periodically journalists start up the project of exposing officer involvement in this business, these projects die out. Frankly, the journalists are terrified of an army of agents that no one seems to be able to control. Even our government is intimidated by their power. Anyone appointed to CBP leadership who makes a move toward reform doesn’t last long.
And no matter how well you encrypt your communications, you would not last long yourself asking hard questions about the obvious. If they wanted to stop it, they would. And they don’t. They just use fear to stop the questions from being asked. Even writing about it here makes me nervous.
The other boogeymen mixed into the red meat are the cartels, the criminal gangs that count among their business interests the smuggling of fentanyl. Customs on the Mexican side, on the way into Mexico, is usually a very light process, rarely requiring much searching. What would they be searching for, if the government of Mexico were on top of things?
Guns.
Guns are what comes from the US. Guns that empower criminal organizations to such an extent that the full military establishment of Mexico is too frightened or corrupted to put up meaningful resistance. So Mexico doesn’t stop them.
But, the US doesn’t either. We could inspect and interdict guns on the way in. But we don’t. I’m hoping that you are not wondering why at this point.
To sum up: here are the parties that do not want to stop fentanyl:
* The other cross border businesses that would be hampered by the slowdown at the ports.
* The cartels in Mexico, and their collaborators.
* The distributors and facilitators, some of whom work at the ports.
* The gun industry.
* Members of Congress and government who want to blame poor migrants, to stay in power.
Now, what we should do about fentanyl is a whole other debate, one that could take place in a world that is not using the issue to defame and oppress whole populations of migrants who are coming to cross the border so that they might work, live, and thrive.
But, at least, let’s look at the border with clear eyes.