The Border Wall – Valuable or Merely a Partisan Campaign Tool

 

Recently discovered 1800’ border tunnel

Coast Guard interdiction of a narco-sub

US-legal AR-15 semi-automatic rifle

Four years ago (5/31/18), I penned a blog during the Trump administration that read: Donald Wants a Wall with Mexico, but Mexico Needs One! We always report on undocumented aliens crossing into the United States or narcotics being smuggled into the United States. But what we do not report is the smuggling the other way – into Mexico and points south – of millions of illegal weapons, including military-grade assault weapons, that have fueled the rise of narco-cartels into positions of near or total control within Mexico, Central and South America, effectively creating war zones with massive human casualties.

For example, Mexico has very strict gun laws and only one gun store in the entire nation. The complex process for a Mexican resident to buy a gun takes an average of three years. Clearly, without the United States (which supplies north of 95% of illicit guns to Mexican criminal cartels), those cartels would be relatively powerless.

These illicit guns, easily purchased in the United States under lax or unenforced gun laws, have given cartels effective political control (by force!) over much of Latin America. The money generated by those cartels has fueled American drug addiction, which we have never been able to control, and the enriched armed US-based gangs that distribute that toxicity. Radical right-wing Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose state has a crumbling electrical grid that desperately needs upgrades and enhancements, instead wants to spend Texas taxpayer money to continue construction on Trump’s inane wall.

The power of very large sums of money sidesteps the wall like a nutcracker opens a walnut. Whether it’s smugglers sending legions of drugs or undocumented escapees across the border in big trucks, small cars, on airlines and commercial ships, at regular airports and harbors or well-funded experts sending drones over the wall, or tunnelers under the wall, submersibles around the wall or construction experts through the wall… it someone wants to breach that barrier, no problem. The money is so huge that we have unsurprising stories that current and former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers Jose Luis Cota, Rodney Tolson, Oziel Cantu, Oscar Osbaldo Ortiz Martinez, etc. are being arrested and charged with accepting bribes to look the other way as smugglers ply their trade. The technology of smuggling, with access to unlimited funding, is both diabolical and impressive. Old narco-submarines were primitive. But that has changed.

“Newer submarines are 'nearly-fully' submersible to be difficult to detect visually, by radar, sonar, or infrared systems. Cargos are typically several tons. In 2015, the largest-known cargo of 7.7 tonnes (17,000 lb) was seized on a semi-submersible.” Wikipedia. That recently discovered tunnel pictured above, very close to a well-guarded legitimate border crossing in San Diego Country, California, runs “the length of a football field on U.S. soil to a warehouse in an industrial area… The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities said. It was discovered near San Diego's Otay Mesa border crossing in an area where more than a dozen other sophisticated tunnels have been found in the last two decades.

“U.S. authorities said it was unknown how long the tunnel had been operating and what amount of drugs, if any, got through undetected. They seized 1,762 pounds (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 pounds (75 kg) of meth and 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg) of heroin in connection with the investigation.” Associated Press, May 16th. It’s clear that whatever we are doing, from our sieve wall partially built and border enforcement to restrain the undocumented and a substantial drug flow, it just plain isn’t working. The flow of guns south also remains virtually untouched.

We have watched the Republican Party building a “platform” of creating “solutions” for problems that really do not exist. From censoring books and teachers under bans of “critical race/gender theory” to making treating transgender children illegal to passive severe voting restrictions to eliminate non-existent voter fraud and making access to abortion criminal. They rail against inflation but kill the very infrastructure bills that would increase productivity, a real solution to a real issue. The “wall” is not different.

As racially motivated mass shootings increase, it’s no longer a “lone wolf” problem. Deeply connected through social media, cadres of White supremacists supported by many elected Republicans and their propaganda media, exchange conspiracy “replacement theories” and even how to deploy weapons against the “invaders.” Lots of gun talk. Today, these racial shooting are implemented by a virtual and national “wolf pack.” Stop those “alien invaders” at our southern wall, and purge non-White traditionalists that are already here. African Americans have been here since the 17th century, but somehow, they are part of that “invasion.” Before we were a nation, White settlers drove out 100% of the population of the United States to the point where truly indigenous peoples have been replaced down to under 2% of that demographic.

At the core of so many of our genuine issues is the proliferation of guns, fostered by a well-paid gun lobby (the NRA), enabled by a very badly reasoned Heller vs DC case (Supreme Court 2008, which miscited 18th century British law and ignored the “well regulated militia” provision of the Second Amendment) that made gun ownership a fundamental right, and accelerated by readily available cache of available American semi-automatic long and short guns. No longer the awkward muskets and flintlocks from 1789 when the Bill of Rights was passed. Gun control would seem to be a national priority. But red states are going the other way, reducing restrictions on guns sales by the boatload. Are they preparing for a civil war?

While there have always been “desperate job seekers” among undocumented border crossers, Republican President Ronald Reagan found a way to deal with those applicants. Cartels weren’t strong and well-armed yet. But if those cartels were not so powerful today, if you took away all their illegal (under their country’s laws) American guns, exactly how many of those asylum seekers at our southern border would simply go back home? Try this sobering report from the Mexican government (per the BBC, May 17th): “The latest update to the national registry of missing people kept by Mexico's attorney general's office shows that over the past two years, the number of disappeared has risen from 73,000 to more than 100,000.” Missing and presumed dead. I am sure reports from other countries, farther south, would produce similar numbers.

If we had true accountability and genuine gun control, eliminating civilian ownership of those semi-automatic weapons entirely, how many fewer Americans would die… or innocents south of the border would not be “missing”? Especially those innocent victims of hate crimes and cartel violence!

I’m Peter Dekom, and while meaningful US gun control is at the heart of mass shootings and masses of undocumented asylum seekers at our border, a border wall is nothing more than an old band aide on an open hemorrhaging wound that is killing America… and points south.