Outsourcing the Drug War: Native American Contractors Respond

(The following is a letter that the Center for International Policy received in response to a recent blog post, "Outsourcing the Drug War," about the outsourcing of counternarcotics operations.  As the contractors' association notes, other Border Lines articles have critically examined the preferential contracting of Native American companies, particularly in immigrant detention.  These include:

Friday, January 22, 2010

Immigration Detention Centers Operated by Alaska Native Corps Faced Hunger Strikes and Protests

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Native American Firms Profit from Detaining Immigrants

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Rise of the Native National Security Corporation

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Native Corporations as National Security Corporations

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Native Americans Profit from Abusive Immigrant Detention and Billions of Dollars in National Security Contracts

I will respond to the letter next week, and look forward to the possibility of generating more public discussion of this preferential contracting system.)

June 16, 2011

Mr. William Goodfellow
Executive Director
Center for International Policy
1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 801
Washington, DC 20036

Dear Mr. Goodfellow:

I am writing in response to the Center for International Policy’s (CIP) “Border Lines” blog run by Tom Barry. As the leading voice for Native Enterprises, the Native American Contractors Association (NACA) takes serious issue with Mr. Barry’s continued mischaracterization of Alaska Native Corporations (ANC) in this online forum.

CIP has misled its observers regarding the role, function, value and purpose of ANCs. For example, in Mr. Barry’s latest blog, entitled “Outsourcing the Drug War” (June 9, 2011), he wrote:

“Over the past several years McCaskill has made a compelling case that better oversight of federal government outsourcing is needed. With respect to counternarcotics contracting, her subcommittee points, for example, to government’s continued use of no-bid contracts to Native Alaskan Corporations and other firms that lack oversight and accountability… Typically, the ANCs serve as fronts for major defense and other federal contractors like Lockheed Martin, which are the hidden partners in these outsourcing deals.”

Mr. Barry’s suggestion that ANCs lack oversight and accountability is entirely false. ANC performance standards must be met on all awarded federal contracts. What’s more, new regulations by the Small Business Administration (SBA) will require ANC 8(a)s to expand financial reporting which will document how profits are helping their Native communities. ANCs are also required to provide shareholders access to detailed records documenting financial performance and operational activities. None of these facts were referenced in Mr. Barry’s story. Mr. Barry also failed to inform viewers that Native corporations are no different from other contractors in their ability to hire subcontractors to responsibly meet the needs of each federal award. This is a common practice among all federal contractors. Mr. Barry also overlooks the fact that on federal service contracts, ANCs are required to perform at least 51 percent of each award.  In many cases, ANCs perform far in excess of this baseline threshold.   Mr. Barry’s statement that ANCs are “fronts” advances an uninformed viewpoint perpetuated by motivated critics of these hardworking enterprises.

In an earlier blog entry entitled “Native American Firms Profit from Detaining Immigrants” (June 10, 2010), Barry stated:

“In 1986 Congress passed legislation that allowed ANCs to participate in the Small Business Administration's (SBA) 8(a) program. Since then, Congress has extended special procurement advantages to 8(a) ANC firms, such as the ability to win sole-source contracts for any dollar amount. A Governmental Accounting Office study in 2006 lambasted the lack of oversight and accountability by government agencies in issuing sole-source contracts to the ANCs.”

The same GAO report -- which included an exhaustive review of ANC contracts, operations, and benefits -- also found no evidence whatsoever of any abuse or wrongdoing by an ANC.  Additionally, the report noted that ANCs are in fact providing significant benefits to their Alaska Native shareholders. The report did recommend increased oversight of ANCs in government contracting, which NACA, the National Congress of American Indians, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development and ANCs supported. The joint recommendations may be viewed here.

In another blog entry entitled, “Rise of the Native National Security Corporation,” (November 10, 2009), Mr. Barry wrote:

“Native American corporations, led by dozens from Alaska, are coming under fire in Congress for their preferential access to billions of dollars in defense, intelligence, and homeland security contracts – and because of the often shoddy, largely unaccountable work on national security and homeland security contracts.”

ANCs are skilled government contractors that provide exceptional value for the U.S. government. These businesses win contracts because they are diversified, experienced companies that offer superior quality and service. All ANC contracts are negotiated and thoroughly scrutinized by knowledgeable contracting officers who understand the federal marketplace and responsibly represent the interests of U.S. taxpayers. ANC participation in the 8(a) program is an important part of honoring this promise. Alaska Natives sacrificed for these opportunities.

In the same post, Barry continued:

“ANCs captured a flood of 8(a) contracts in 2000-2008 valued more than the stated maximum. In that eight-year period the federal government issued $6.3 billion in contracts to ANCs like Ahtna, Chugach, ASRC Management Services, and Chenega that far out-stripped the $3.5 million set by the federal government to give preference to small businesses.”

Here, Mr. Barry irresponsibly suggests ANCs have done something wrong or improper, when in fact their ability to win contracts of higher value compared to  other 8(a) companies is entirely legal and appropriate – for good reason. Unlike smaller 8(a) companies that support only one or two individual business owners, ANCs collectively support hundreds, in some cases thousands, of disadvantaged individuals. In order for ANCs to fulfill their mission and make a meaningful difference in the lives of Native shareholders, ANCs require access to larger government contracts.

In one of Barry’s earliest blogs on ANCs entitled, “Native Corporations as National Security Corporations” (November 5, 2009), he wrote:

“At the heart of the mounting criticism of Ahtna and other Native American corporations, particularly the ANCs and the numerous Alaska Native Village Corporations, is the breakdown and abuse of federal contracting. Preferences are given to these Native American corporations in federal procurement as part of an affirmative action social and economic policy framework that was intended to offer economic development opportunities to impoverished, disadvantaged communities. But the preferences have functioned as shields to deflect competition, to gain access to no-bid contracts, and to pass the bounty of federal defense, homeland security, energy, and services contracts to non-Native partners.”

Mr. Barry’s characterization dismisses the true reason why ANCs were originally formed. Nearly 40 years ago, the U.S. promised ANCs important economic development opportunities in exchange for the forfeiture of millions of acres of Alaska Native land worth trillions in oil that has helped power our nation’s economy. ANC participation in the 8(a) program honors this promise.  ANCs are fulfilling their mission to lift the economic condition of Alaska Native people. According to the ANCSA Regional Association 2010 annual report, since the
formation of ANCs from 1970 to 2007:

•             The Alaska Native high school graduation rate increased from 14 percent to 46 percent.
•             The proportion of Alaska Native people graduating from a four-year college increased from one percent to eight percent.
•             Inflation-adjusted household income rose by 50 percent.
•             The proportion of Alaska Native people living below the poverty line decreased from 47 percent to 22 percent.
•             The proportion of Alaska Natives with incomes at 200 percent of the poverty level or greater rose from 29 percent to 54 percent.
•             The proportion of Alaska Native households without complete plumbing dropped from 51 percent to 13 percent.
•             In 2008 alone, the twelve regional corporations distributed roughly $171 million in dividends – and more than ten percent of their employment base represented Alaska Native individuals.
•             ANCs made contributions of $11.1 million to 3,200 recipients and endowments in 2008 alone as well.

I see from CIP’s website that a main part of the organization’s mission is to protect human rights. Ironically, ANCs help do exactly that for the Alaska Native shareholders they serve.  Alaska Native people have endured centuries of intense struggle and neglect. While ANCs are having a positive impact on the overall community, Alaska Native people still remain one of the most impoverished populations in our nation.  This will change, provided ANCs have continued access to programs like 8(a) that offer economic self-sustainability to advance their communities.

Had Mr. Barry contacted our organization for comment, or had he conducted even a basic level research on ANCs, he could have learned these facts and accurately portrayed ANCs to the CIP community. We hope that, in the future, Mr. Barry will refrain from trafficking baseless accusations about ANCs and will instead present an objective, factual depiction of ANCs in any future coverage of the issue. We encourage him to visit www.nativecontractors.org <http://www.nativecontractors.org>  for additional information.

Sincerely,


Executive Director
Native American Contractors Association

The TCO Question

Tim Stellar in the Señor Reporter blog of the Arizona Daily Star has a helpful review of some of recent discussion about the new usage of the term transnational criminal organization (TCO). What's so shocking is that DHS along with its CBP and ICE agencies, together with the State Department, has started to use this term without defining it. But we shouldn't be surprised, since it uses so many other strategic terms like border security without saying what it means. No wonder Americans don't know what's going on at the border.

From Señor Reporter:

"The discussion about what to call drug-trafficking groups is taking some interesting turns.

"In recent weeks, at least two others have weighed in on the question of what you call the groups that move illegal drug from points south into the United States. (You may recall this was the topic of a blog item and a story I wrote in recent weeks) Should you call them Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs), Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) or cartels?

"While researching the recent story, I interviewed Shannon O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations, who made a compelling point about why it matters what you call them. She said the way you define these groups guides how you respond to them.

"They’re quite sophisticated. But using the word ‘cartel’ gives it a structure, hierarchy and image that isn’t there," O'Neil said. "Using a word like cartel doesn’t lead you to think what we need is more streeetlights and soccer at night for young people. Or even community policing."

"Drug-war analyst Sylvia Longmire, whom I interviewed for my "cartel member" story, has decided to use TCO, or transnational criminal organization. Her upcoming book is called "Cartel," but she's not completely comfortable with the word.

"Tom Barry, a senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington, also considered the nomenclature issue in a recent item. He said TCO has the advantages of emphasizing the international nature of these groups and their involvement in multiple criminal activities.

"However, Barry said, TCO has disadvantages. For one, it de-emphasizes the centrality of drug prohibition in the rise of these criminal groups. For another, it bolsters undue alarmism about the threat these groups may pose the United States, he said.

"Indeed, it's been an ongoing theme of reporting on Mexico's drug wars that most of these criminal groups are fragmenting, and that is contributing to the increase in violence. In a recent analysis by Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez (in Spanish), he charts the splintering in Mexico's "cartels" from 2006 to 2010. (Here's asynopsis in English.)

"The six cartels present in 2006 became 12 criminal groups in 2010, Guerrero Gutiérrez writes. The notorious Sinaloa Cartel, he argues, broke into two groups around 2008, and by 2010 had become four. He refers to them all as "cárteles," but you have to wonder at what point the groups are too small or disorganized to merit even that imprecise label.

"On the other hand, Tony Coulson, the recently retired head of the DEA's Tucson office, told me he considers the Sinaloa Cartel, run by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman, the only true "cartel" left.

" 'Chapo Guzman is in fact the only cartel in Mexico right now,' Coulson said. 'The Mexican government has helped him get there by taking off competition.'"

Also see:

Rhetorical Rise of TCOs

The Coming Invasion But Who Knows the Name of Our Enemy (review of Cartel by Sylvia Longmire)

More on Outsourcing Drug War

Several days ago Border Lines reported on the study by Sen. Claire McCaskill's subcommittee on outsourcing counternarcotics operations in Latin America in Outsourcing the Drug War.  In that post, I noted: "The problem isn’t oversight or outsourcing. The central problem in U.S. counternarcotics funding and programming is the federal government’s continuing commitment to drug prohibition."

Geoffrey Ramsey at InSight reports on the same study, excerpted below:

In a statement on her website, the Subcommittee chair Claire McCaskill (D-MO) claimed that this amounts to a failure in management, saying the U.S. is “wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we're getting in return.”

Interestingly, the Senator has also used her subcommittee position to denounce not just the lack of oversight of U.S. drug policy, but its efficacy as well. "It's becoming increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed,” said McCaskill.

Officials in the White House have loudly rejected such claims, and said that they are doing much more than previous administrations to stop the northward flow of drugs. According to a recent LA Times article, the Department of Homeland Security has seized 31 percent more drugs, 75 percent more cash and 64 percent more weapons under the Obama administration than in the previous two and a half years.

While this may be true for recent years, the data on overall cocaine prices does not seem to reflect a reduction in supply, as InSight has pointed out. Instead, the long term price trend is overwhelmingly downward.

Ultimately, however, neither the issue of seizures or accountability is the major problem with U.S. drug policy. Drug trafficking is estimated to be a $35 billion per year industry, which is driven almost entirely by the high rates of drug consumption in the U.S. Until officials in this country effectively drive down this massive level demand, it is unlikely for either oversight reforms or increases in drug operations to end this hemisphere’s drug-fueled violence.

The Drug Trafficking Organizations That Can't Be Found

A great divide separates the drug wars at home and abroad.

On the one side, there’s violence of horrific cruelty and unprecedented scope -- involving a continuum of actors including drug capos, amorphous trafficking organizations, street gangs, corrupt politicians and security officials, and the military itself.

On the other side of the divide, there’s a multibillion market for the drug contraband, trafficking and sales networks, street gangs, corrupt narcotics agents, and, fundamentally important, the drug prohibition policy apparatus that keeps the drug trade illegal, criminal, and violent – and immensely profitable.

It used to be that little separated the United States and Mexico but a black line on a map or, as in the common metaphor, a line in the sand extending nearly 2,000 miles. Over the past couple of decades, especially since mid-decade of the 2000s, that line has become increasingly fortified – turning the line into an increasingly effective international barrier.

The drive to secure the border has made illegal crossings of immigrants and drugs substantially more difficult and expensive. Yet, for all the billions spent to “secure the border,” Mexico’s illegal drugs continue to flow north and counternarcotics operatives continue to tap a ready array of crossborder trafficking and distribution networks to move their marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and meth into the near insatiable U.S. market. Along the way north – whether from Colombia, the Caribbean, Central America, or Mexico – illegal drug consumption steadily increases, creating new pathways of social disintegration and violence.

But what are these organizations that produce, transport, and distribute the illegal drugs? Those following the news reports about the drug-related violence in Mexico are gaining increased familiarity with the names of the main groups – Los Zetas, Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, the Federation, etc.  The power and ruthlessness of these trafficking organizations, along with the corruption and direct involvement in the trade by Mexico’s security forces and military, help explain why it has been so difficult to root out and rid Mexico of this scourge.

But what their reach into the United States? Surely the combined power of the traditional local, state, and federal counterdrug forces, now bolstered by the billions in new homeland security and DOJ dollars directed against these so-called transnational crime organizations (TCOs) should be able hunt them down on this side of the great divide.

Yet, for all the professions of the Obama administration and the operations of the ever-broadening phalanx of counternarcotics intelligence centers, multiagency drug forces, and new initiatives like the Border Enforcement Security Taskforces (BEST) and the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT) – both organized by the Department of Homeland Security – the drug war at home has proved unable to deter let alone dismantle the networks that smuggle, traffic, and distribute Mexico-sourced drugs.

Why?

In seeking answers, it is worth remembering that, while the drug-violence in Mexico is unprecedented, there northbound flow of drugs from Mexico is nothing new. Our heroin and marijuana supplies have largely come from Mexico even before the drug war was launched, and cocaine is been flowing through Mexico since the late 1980s.

It’s also worth noting that the hundreds of multiagency drug taskforces funded by JAG grants and coordinated by ONDCP over the past couple of decades have a scant record of dismantling their enemy number one – the Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). That’s because these DTOs don’t have the same type of traceable hierarchy and command structure of traditional Organized Crime, like the mafias.

A DOJ-commissioned- evaluation of HIDTA performance, released in 2002, is instructive:

Consistent standards are critical to measuring performance, but when HlDTA personnel were asked in interviews what exactly determined when a drug trafficking organization was deemed “disrupted or dismantled” for the purpose or scorekeeping, answers were vague and inconsistent.

In addition, there is reason to believe that drug trafficking organizations are more amorphous than they were in the past. Thirty years ago, traditional organized crime groups, organizations whose membership and boundaries were easily defined, dominated high-level drug trafficking.  

However, enforcement personnel interviewed for this report consistently noted that organizations today are far more nebulous than traditional organized crime groups, and they argued that, with the exception of certain gangs operating in retail dealing, organizations today are better thought of as a confederation or network of free-lance Traffickers, or small trafficking groups, than a tight-knit unit.  

When discussing purported spillover violence, the presence of Mexican cartels in the United States, and transnational threats -- as DHS, DOJ, and ONDCP increasingly (and recklessly) do -- there should also be more considered reflection and more professional threat assessments about the amorphous character of the transnational criminal and drug-trafficking organizations that are said to threaten our common security. Otherwise, we are doomed to continued failed -- and costly -- war on drugs at home and in Mexico.

(Next: More on the HIDTA drug war infrastructure in Arizona and elsewhere, and the failures of HIDTA)

Drug War Intensity: A Look Back at HIDTA

HIDTA Drug War Infrastructure/ONDCP

As the casualties of the drug wars in Mexico continue to mount, the federal government is intensifying the crackdown on illegal drugs at home.

In the past two and a half years, President Obama has opened new fronts in the drug war at home and abroad. The March 2009 launch of the Southwest Border Initiative and the creation of the illegal drug-focused Alliance for Combat Transnational Threats signaled, among other things, the Obama administration’s commitment to enforcing drug prohibition.

Despite the evident failures of President Felipe Calderón’s military-led drug war in Mexico – as measured by spreading bloodshed, failed governance in many areas, and gross abuses by the government’s security forces –the Obama administration continues U.S. support for this drug war across our southern border.

The Obama administration, through the White House’s Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP), has distanced itself from the “war on drugs” rhetoric embraced by previous administrations – from President Nixon through George. W. Bush.

But it continues to support the instruments of the drug war at home and abroad, such as multiagency drug task forces and foreign counternarcotics aid.

The creation in September 2009 of the Arizona-based Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT), a loose counterdrug alliance of 60 federal, state, and local agencies, indicated that not only was the administration committed to continuing the crackdown on drugs but also that it was merging the foreign and domestic drug wars. In ACTT, the notion that drugs constitute transnational threats on U.S. national security is being tapped to mobilize a new alliance of multiagency drug task forces – in yet another DHS public relations display of its oft-repeated commitment to secure the border.

The Unending Drug War

President Richard Nixon was the first president to use the term “war on drugs.” At a 1971 press conference he also asserted that illegal drugs were “public enemy number one in the United States.” Nixon had started framing illegal drugs – with the focus on marijuana use at home and growing heroin use by U.S. troops in Vietnam – as a national security issue two years before.

In a special message to Congress on July 14, 1969, Nixon described drug abuse as "a serious national threat." That same year Nixon also mounted Operation Intercept to obstruct the flow of marijuana into the country from Mexico. The 1973 creation by Nixon of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which consolidated the counternarcotics operations of all federal agencies, represented the institutionalization of the foreign and domestic war on drugs.

During the 1980s and 1990s Congress passed a series of bipartisan anti-drug bills, the most important of which was the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. That measure gave rise, among other things, to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

Foundation for the Drug Prohibition Infrastructure

The war on drugs has been raging for more than forty years. Yet it was not until the late 1980s that the federal government began constructing the infrastructure of regional and local drug task forces, which have for more than twenty years been the main instruments of the continuing drug crackdown.

The plainclothes “special investigations units” that drive around in vehicles seized in drug busts are the shock forces of the drug war at home. In addition to their reliance on forfeiture assets, these special undercover units have become shadowy national police force bringing together local, state, and federal narcs. These drug agents, without uniforms and without marked cars, are funded almost entirely by flows of federal funding – through DHS, DOJ, and ONDCP, among others.

The infrastructure for the drug war at home is largely a legacy of the Reagan administration and the mounting bipartisan enthusiasm for a national drug/crime crackdown in the late 1980s, as manifested in the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Among the legacies of that drug war law include:

·        * Creation of the ONDCP at the White House (with arch conservative William Bennett as the office’s first “Drug Czar”),

·        * Designation by ONDCP of five High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs) for targeted crackdown operations, and

·        * Establishment of a drug war slush fund in the Department of Justice called the Edward Byrne criminal justice assistance program, renamed as the Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program in 2005.

High Intensity Goes National

The counternarcotics infrastructure, which began taking hold after the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, is more diffuse and widespread than focused and targeted.

From five HIDTAs designated in 1990 (Houston, Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, South Florida and Southwest Border - California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas), there are now 32 high intensity drug trafficking areas spread across the nation, covering most of the nation except for sparsely populated expanses of the Midwest and North Plains.

As an evaluation of the HIDTA program commissioned by the DOJ in 2000 observed:

The geographic scope of the program has expanded so dramatically that in an interview, one ONDCP official quipped, “We used to keep track of the HIDTA program by listing areas that had HIDTAs; now, we just list areas that don’t have HIDTAs.”  The HIDTA program can no longer be seen as directing funds to specific regions; it is de facto a national program. 

The expansion of the HIDTAs and the proliferation of JAG-funded multiagency drug forces are not the result of determinations that new regions have indeed become “high intensity” drug trafficking corridors. Nor has this expansion of the drug war infrastructure been spurred by evaluations of the effectiveness of the HIDTAs and drug forces. 

In fact, there is little to show that this federal-local network of narcs have reduced illegal drug consumption let alone meeting their objective of dismantling Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs).

Instead, it has been the bounty of federal dollars – traditionally from DOJ and ONDCP but not heavily supplemented by DHS funding – that makes all law enforcement jurisdictions eager to join the flagging but generously funded drug war at home.

Eager for the federal disbursements and the political capital for officials eager to demonstrate their tough-on-drugs credentials, there’s continuing pressure on ONDCP to expand the HIDTAs.

Nowhere is this pressure on the federal government so strong and shrill as in Arizona. Mirroring the hypocrisy that pervades the debate over border control in Arizona, the state’s Republican leadership blames Washington and big government for many of the state’s social and economic problems. Yet Arizona – which receives considerably more federal revenues that it pays in federal taxes – also demands more federal involvement and federal dollars.

Initially, the Arizona HIDTA region included the four border counties of Cochise, Santa Cruz, Pima, and Yuma, as well as Pinal and Maricopa. Later the western counties of La Paz and Mohave counties were also incorporated into the Arizona HIDTA. Most recently, Navajo County was named a HIDTA county in 2010, as part of a bipartisan drive in Arizona to have Arizona designed as the first state where every county is designated as a high-intensity trafficking area.

U.S. Cong Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat (defeated by a more conservative Republican challenger in 2010) who counted on the support of Republican senators McCain and Kyle, introduced the Southwest Border Narcotics Reduction Act in 2009 to have ONDCP declare the entire state a HIDTA. According to Kirkpatrick, "The drug cartels are taking advantage of the gap in our law enforcement's plan of attack." 

There is, however, little or no evidence that the HIDTAs have done much of anything to target the drug cartels. Like so many of the rash of border security and counternarcotics bills being introduced by border politicians, this initiative to expand the drug-war infrastructure at home is simply more pork-barrel politics and border security political posturing. 

Similarly, there is no hard evidence that the new Alliance to Combat Transnational Crime in Arizona is doing anything to meet its declared mission:

"To deny, degrade, disrupt, and ultimately dismantle criminal organizations and their ability to operate; engage communities to reduce their tolerance of illegal activity; and establish a secure and safe border environment, which will ultimately improve the quality of life of affected communities."

(Next: HIDTA Foundation for Border Security Drug Wars)


Also see: Escalating Drug War in Arizona, at: http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/escalating-drug-war-in-arizona.html

Border Security Congestion

Sierra Blanca Border Patrol Checkpoint/Tom Barry

The El Paso Times called again (June 13) for Congress to pass the Putting Our Resources Towards Security (PORTS) bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the Democratic congressman who was the Border Patrol chief in the El Paso district in the early 1990s.

According to the editorial, Reyes’s bill will “beef up funding for our international ports of entry -- and infuse more money into our economy,” noting that slow border-crossing lines have been “the sad song since border security was tightened up following 9/11.”

This is a pork barrel bill cloaked in the politically popular parlance of border security.  Along with the less deceptively named bill, Emergency Ports of Entry Personnel and Infrastructure Funding Act, introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the PORTS bill is requesting a $6 billion authorization to improve the land ports-of-entry through increased hiring of customs and other inspection officials as well major infrastructure improvements.

The El Paso Times makes what seems at first glance a reasonable argument, namely that long border waits decrease binational commerce and thereby slow economic development. Yet Reyes, Cornyn, the El Paso Times, and such border boosters as the Border Trade Alliance fail to acknowledge that the fundamental reason for the exceedingly long border crossing times is not inadequate staffing and infrastructure, as they claim.

Rather, the problem is uncritical acceptance of the border security paradigm imposed on border affairs after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The resulting border security buildup has become a powerful disincentive for border crossings.  Whether business, tourist, or family member, no one wants to wait hours to cross into the United States.  New border security measures instituted on the U.S. side have also slowed southbound traffic.

The PORTS bill uses the rhetoric of security to win favor for the channeling of ever more federal resources toward the border region, which has benefited over the past ten years from an injection of billions of dollars for new Border Patrol, ICE, and CBP facilities, the deployment of an array of Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security agents, a phalanx of new checkpoints and fortified POEs, and wasteful real and virtual fences.

Rather than cheering on the border security bandwagon, the El Paso Times would do better for the border community to put its reporters and editors to work on researching and analyzing the failures of the border security framework and drug prohibition.

The Border Trade Alliance, the main business booster of the Reyes and Cornyn bills, opportunistically situates its own lobbying with the border security buildup.  It supports, for example, “increasing the number of frontline [ital. added] inspectors” so that Customs and Border Protection “can devote the manpower necessary to interdict those individuals who would seek to do us harm.” It is just this kind of alarmist threat assessment of the border – as a frontline against terrorists – that has created the problems that BTA and Reyes say should be addressed by yet more border security spending.

The border is not a frontline against terrorism but rather a Maginot Line against drugs and immigrants.  Those supporting the PORTS bill like the BTA and El Paso Times should be using their expertise as borderland experts to call into question the misdirected border security buildup.

----

Among the seven policy recommendations of the new CIP International Policy Report, “Policy on the Edge: Failures of Border Security and New Directions in Border Control,” is the following one calling for a recalibration of border control and border trade:

Rather than primarily being driven by political and pork-barrel imperatives, border policy should better reflect the identity of the border as both a barrier and a nexus.

Over the past decade the U.S. government has focused more on hindering crossborder traffic with Mexico than on facilitating the legal crossing of people and goods. On balance, border crossings have been considered more as a threat than as a fundamental benefit to both nations. Most of this attention has been focused on northbound traffic. However, since 2009, the U.S. government has been increasingly monitoring, and thereby slowing, southbound traffic to detect flows of weapons and illegally generated cash.

U.S.-Mexico trade constitutes a palpable national interest—nearly $400 billion annually (with U.S. exports of $229 billion in 2010 much larger than $163 billion imports from Mexico). About 80 percent of this trade is carried by railcars and truck across land ports of entry (POE).

However, the importance of binational trade and society doesn’t imply that we should be spending billions of dollars more on further upgrading our ports of entry and increasing personnel, as many border politicians insist. Border politicians led by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), for example, introduced a bill in 2010 that would provide $5 billion in emergency funding to hire 5,000 new CBP agents to staff the POEs and to upgrade the POE infrastructure, contending that border trade needs have been neglected.

Too much funding in the past ten years has been directed to the border—not only security funding but also funding for new and overhauled POEs as well as a steady expansion of CBP agents assigned to the POEs. There is no question that maddeningly slow border crossings adversely affect binational economic relations.

Yet the main problem at the POEs is not staffing or infrastructure inadequacies. It is the intense scrutiny of all border crossers in the name of border security. In the wake of 9/11, rigorous inspection practices stemmed from homeland security concerns about foreign terrorists. Over time the border security justification for stepped-up inspections at POEs and checkpoints has expanded from counterterrorism to supporting Mexico’s drug war. In practice, though, the inspections are wildly disconnected from actual security threats and mostly net the products of flawed U.S. policies that foster illegal crossings, including gun rights policies that allow sales of military-grade weapons and drug policies that foster illegal crossborder flows.

The congestion at the border would greatly ease if the federal government first addressed drug reform, immigration reform and gun control.

Rhetorical Rise of the Transnational Crime Organizations

Marijuana is the cash cow of smuggling.

Over the past few years the federal agencies involved in border and illegal-drug control operations, as well as participating state agencies, have increasingly adopted the term Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) to refer to Mexican groups involved in drug trafficking.  

TCO is now used interchangeably with Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO). State Department travel advisories for Mexico have started warning of TCO operations. For its part, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT) in Arizona in September 2009 as part of the Obama administration’s border security initiative.

The increased use of TCOs instead of DTOs reflects increased alarm about the intensity and spread of drug-related violence in Mexico not any measurable increase of DTO presence in the United States.

Clearly, Mexican DTOs like Colombian DTOs seeks markets outside their own countries, primarily the United States. In this way, they are certainly transnational. What is more, in Mexico the criminal operations of the DTOs involve more than drug trafficking – and increasingly so as smuggling illegal drugs across the northern border has become more difficult and costly.

These are organized crime organizations that seek to maximize profits, and are seeking income, both for the organization itself and for its associates, through an array of illegal operations, including the extortion of migrants. Yet there is no doubt that drug trafficking remains their core focus.

Unlike many transnational corporations that are widely diversified, the DTOs remain entrenched in the illegal drug sector. Unlike TNCs that have established branch headquarters throughout the world, the DTOs of Mexico or the DTOs of Colombia remain based in their home countries.

With the launching of the Obama administration’s Southwest Border Initiative in March 2009, shortly after Obama took office and appointed Janet Napolitano to direct DHS, the United States began to acknowledge U.S. shared responsibility in the illegal drug trade, including U.S. consumption, southbound flow of weapons, cash flows, and money laundering.

The new preference the TCO nomenclature does have the virtue of better reflecting the cross-border character of the drug trade. TCO does also communicate that the DTOs are involved in a range of criminal activities and thus have a wide penetration of Mexican politics and economy.

But there are political and strategic dangers of adopting TCOs as the accepted designation for the DTOs, including:

·         Deemphasizing of the centrality of drugs will have the effect of reducing the focus on drug prohibition as the central causal factor in drug-related crime and violence.

·         Identifying the DTOs as transnational organizations may stoke the largely based alarmism – coming almost exclusively from the political right – that the same organizations, like the Zetas, that are responsible for the horrific violence in Mexico and Central America have a substantial organizational presence and command structure north of the border – rather than linked across the U.S.-Mexico border mostly by the smuggled product and distribution networks rather than by a defined hierarchy of command.

·         The transition from DTO to TCO as the common descriptor tends to bolster the credibility of those who falsely claim that these organizations are strengthening and expanding their influence in the United States – although it is undoubtedly the case that the Mexican DTOs are doing just that in Central America.

·         The new use of TCO is routinely accompanied by the phrase “transnational threat,” giving new weight to analysis that identifies the DTOs as constituting a national security threat to the United States – leading to unconstructive and misdirected responses that miss the essential criminal -- not political or ideological -- character of the drug trafficking groups.

Over the past several years, the federal government has variously described those organizations responsible for the spreading violence in Mexico as cartels, DTOs, and TCOs. They have also been likened to the type of insurgency that besets Colombia.  Outside the federal government, there are some in Congress, as well as an array of state politicians and border security activists, who believe they should be officially classified as foreign terrorist organizations so as to increase the enforcement and intervention options.

The Obama administration must take some responsibility for the confusion about what’s going on in Mexico and in the borderlands. To its credit, the administration has shed the term drug war. Yet it has failed to create a new framework to describe the problem and solution. That is in large part due to its political cowardice when it comes to addressing the failures and consequences of drug prohibition.