The Border War

Our southern border with Mexico is a drug trafficking war zone that is as out of control as the flow of illegal immigrants is. Among the streams of illegal immigrants searching for a better life, lurk dangerous, violent, and reckless criminals and vicious extortionists.

Drug lords terrorize and take over border towns and villages and gangsters trade heroin for guns. The most violent end up on the FBI’s most wanted list. Take Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, head of the Gulf Cartel, just for one example, with $5 million reward on his head. Sanchez, in addition to being accused of trafficking thousands of kilos of cocaine and marijuana into the United States annually, is wanted for capital murder.

Ninety percent of the cocaine that comes into the United States is smuggled across the southern border, according to official figures. That’s a lot of cocaine, considering that the U.S. consumption is the largest in the world, with 5.9 million persons aged 12 or older using cocaine in 2003. Snorting coke is not just a personal sport. It has enormous social costs. Nearly half of state and local law enforcement agencies identify cocaine (powder or crack) use in violent crimes in their areas.

Well over 90% of all of the imported marijuana comes across the Mexican border. Meth availability is on the rise, fueled primarily by increased production of both powder and ice methamphetamine in Mexico.

The immigration problem brings illegal aliens, drugs, crime, the social impact on the states, and most probably terrorists. Social ills that Washington ignores. The only line of defense currently is the Border Patrol, the Texas Rangers and the civilian Minutemen. Did I mention there's an election 2008?