More Border Security Bureaucracy

Border security is about border walls, virtual fence projects, drones, and a proliferation of drug-sniffing canine teams and Border Patrol agents.  But border security is also about expansive big government bureaucracy, which aims to incorporate all other bureaucracies under its own mission goals and apparatus.

Border security is the province of the federal government’s most unwieldy and directionless bureaucracy – namely the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Immigration enforcement and border security account for the largest part of the DHS’s $56-billion annual budget.

The BorderEnforcement Security Task Forces (BEST) teams constitute a little known but illustrative dimension of the ever-expanding bureaucracy of border security.

The BEST program is one of numerous attempts by DHS to associate other federal agencies and local law enforcement agencies with its border security and counternarcotics missions.

Launched in 2006, the BEST program is now getting a new boost in Congress.

Two leading border hawks in Congress, Michael McCaul and Henry Cuellar, are sponsors of new border-security legislation to support the network of anti-drug task forces sponsored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency. The Jaime Zapata Border Enforcement Security Task Force Act was approved by the House in a 351-2 vote and also has been approved by the Senate.

The new border-security bill would institutionalize the BEST teams as part of the DHS apparatus and designate $10 million in annual funding for the anti-drug teams.

Named after Jaime Zapata, an ICE agent who was killed in Mexico last year apparently as part of the drug wars, the proposed act now awaits the signature of President Obama.

ICE established its first BEST team at a time when DHS was ramping up the departmental border security programs through the Security Border Initiative and under the direction of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.

By establishing the BEST program, ICE was hopping on the border security bandwagon, which was benefiting from an array of new budget allocations. Although almost all of the billions of dollars in new border security funding flowed to CBP and the Border Patrol, ICE aimed to show that it too was an important border security player. The program was also a way to put ICE at the top – at least on paper – of a multiagency effort to “secure the border” and “combat transnational criminal organizations.”

Keeping Alive Border-Security Alarmism

McCaul and Cuellar, both from Texas, have help drive border security spending by their alarmist assessments of cross-border threats.

McCaul, the Republican set to become the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Cuellar, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Border Security, say that ICE’s BEST teams are essential components of the border security buildup.

According to Cuellar, the BEST teams “help secure our Nation’s borders and help dismantle criminal organizations by creating cross-agency teams to combat them.”

McCaul boasts to his constituents of his role in getting this new piece of border security legislation passed. After getting the nod to head the homeland security committee, McCaul sent a newsletter to his constituents stating:  “Texas is rich with critical infrastructure and potential terrorist targets including the Port of Houston and adjacent petrochemical facilities…. Our border… remains a gateway for the undetected entry of Mexican drug cartels and terrorist operatives who have increased their presence in Latin America.  On my watch we will make progress securing the border.”

“Expanding BESTs,” says ICE, “will help dismantle the leadership and supporting infrastructure of criminal organizations responsible for perpetrating violence and illegal activity along our borders and in the nation’s interior.”

ICE contends that the southern border “has experienced a dramatic surge in cross-border crime and violence in recent years due to the intense competition between Mexican drug cartels and criminal smuggling organizations.” What’s more, ICE says that the northern border shouldn’t be ignored in border security spending since “law enforcement agencies at the northern border face similar challenges from transnational organizations.”

The Bizarre Politics of Border Security

Tom Barry

Published by Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/print/civil-liberties/bizarre-politics-border-security

In the House, Democrats and Republicans have come together to pass a new border security bill, the Border Enforcement Security Task Force Act, and at the same time politicians are declaring their support for immigration reform they are insisting that border security is the foundation of any reform of immigration laws.

While U.S. immigration enforcement and deportation practices have drawn widespread criticism, there is generally uncritical support for strong border control in Congress and among the principal advocates for immigration reform.

Border security is portrayed as a matter of national security. Yet the politics of immigration reform, opportunistic criticism of the Obama administration by Republicans, and pork-barrel lobbying for more border security funding are the driving forces behind U.S. border security operations, not any considered strategy of what is needed and what works.

As the immigration reform debate begins, the politics of border security will come into play.

Border Control Strategy

Recently the Border Patrol issued its 2012-2016 Border Patrol Strategic Plan. Escalating pressure of illegal immigration flows gave rise to the Border Patrol’s first national strategy, while the perceived new threat environment after 9/11 sparked the formulation of the second strategy in 2004. In contrast, the Border Patrol has offered no convincing rationale for formulating its new national strategy.

To a large degree, the new strategy was published not because the Border Patrol does indeed have a new strategic take on border control but because of the politics of border security in America. Rather than clarifying the border security strategy, it highlights the difficulty DHS has had in defining what the newest federal bureaucracy means by “border security.”

The new strategy – the third in the Border Patrol’s nine-decade history -- sheds little light on what it will cost the nation to “secure the border” and how threats to border security are assessed and prioritize.

Although the Border Patrol dates back to 1924, it wasn’t until 70 years later that the agency issued its first national strategy. The Border Patrol’s first national strategy, released in 1994, came in response to rising illegal immigration flows through the border’s main urban corridors, mainly north from Juárez and Tijuana.

The 1994 “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy called for blocking the most frequented immigration corridors with concentrated deployments of Border Patrol agents and the targeted buildup of new “tactical infrastructure” such as border walls, stadium lighting and other barriers.

As a result, illegal immigration flows would be diverted, it was argued, to more remote and difficult-to-traverse stretches of the border, thereby creating an effective disincentive for would-be immigrants.

The central objective, only partially successful, of the operations established in accordance with the first strategic plan was to diminish illegal border crossings. As intended, the number of illegal crossings through the targeted sections of the border did decline, in some areas dramatically. But new major south-north immigration corridors emerged, confounding the Border Patrol strategists.

As a result, the Border Patrol was pressed to quickly extend its “Prevention Through Deterrence” tactics to other regions of the largely rural areas of the border that had previously seen only trickles of illegal immigration. Another consequence of the 1994 deterrence strategy was the dramatic increase in horrific deaths as immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally attempted to cross through harsh border landscapes and raging rivers.

Following the 1994 strategic plan, the Border Patrol shifted to threat-centered strategies.

There is no reference to the “Prevention Through Deterrence” concept in the latest strategy statements, yet these deterrence tactics continue to guide Border Patrol operations.
The National Border Patrol Strategy of 2004, which came a year after the Border Patrol was folded into the Department of Homeland Security, marked the transition from a “border control” to a “border security” framework.

While the priority of the Border Patrol stayed the same – “to establish and maintain operational control over our Nation’s borders” – the focus of that “control” expanded to include terrorists and terrorist weapons, in addition to illegal immigrants. This new counterterrorism mission tapped military terminology – such as “operational control,” “defense-in-depth” and “situational awareness” – to describe the agency’s new strategic operations.

In introducing the first post-9/11 strategy, CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner, in 2004, tied border control goals to the Bush administration’s war against terrorism, stating, “This goal is vital to national security.”

Adopting military jargon, the Border Patrol in 2004 set forth the strategic concept of “operational control” of the border. The degree to which the Border Patrol achieved operational control would be the metric by which the progress in ensuring border security would be measured.

What Constitutes Border Security?

What precipitated the rather haphazard development of the latest strategy was not any change in what the Border Patrol calls the “threat environment” or the change in the numbers of apprehension and seizures. Instead, a political uproar associated with the performance measures associated with the 2004 report sparked the hurried production of the new strategic plan.

DHS and other Bush administration officials began referring to the Border Patrol strategy of instituting operational control over the border, particularly as part of the 2005 DHS initiative called the Secure Border Initiative (SBI). In 2006, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the range of SBI programs, including the new border fence and the virtual fence, would result in “operational control” of the southwest border by the end of 2010.

Pressed to show its rate of progress in “securing the border,” DHS and the Border Patrol in 2004 established a border-security schematic designed to document the varying degrees of security – descending from “effective” or full “operational control” to “managed” control, “monitored,” “low-level monitored” and “remote/low activity.” The Border Patrol based the ranking mostly on the degree of presence of personnel, infrastructure and technological surveillance, although the subjective evaluations of Border Patrol officials in each sector were also factored in.

When the Border Patrol began releasing its estimates of “operational control” in early 2010, the figures unleashed a firestorm of criticism by border security proponents. Only 13% of the 8,067 miles under Border Patrol jurisdiction were categorized as being under full or effective operational control. Along the southwest border, only 44% of the nearly 2,000 miles were ranked as being under “effective” or “managed operational control.” Along the northern border, just 2% was under operational control by 2010.

Border security hawks lambasted the Border Patrol for its failure to achieve operational control of large stretches of the southwestern border and almost the entire northern border. In turn, they escalated their demands for more fencing, more drones, more agents, more remote ground surveillance and more National Guard on the border.

The Border Patrol countered that the areas that were not under operational control were generally rugged, infrequently crossed sections of the border. While these areas did not meet the high standard of operational control – including fencing, high concentration of agents, and an array of electronic surveillance – they were constantly monitored, explained the Border Patrol.

It should be noted that the 2004 strategic plan did qualify and limit what the Border Patrol meant by operational control. According to the 2004 strategy statement, “Operational control is defined as the ability to detect, respond, and interdict border penetrations in areas deemed as high priority for threat potential or other national security objectives.”

What is more, the Border Patrol acknowledged that operational control “may be limited to specific smuggling corridors or other geographically defined areas” – seemingly contradicting the grand ambition of operational control over the nation’s borders.

The Border Patrol, finding itself in a rhetorical trap of its own making, had dropped all references to “operational” or “effective” control by the end of fiscal year 2010. The concept of operational control is nowhere to be found in the 2012-2016 strategic plan. Nor is there any official explanation by DHS, CBP or the Border Patrol why this strategic framework was all but erased from official discourse.

The Operational Control Backlash

The news that half of the southwestern borderlands and nearly all of the northern border were still not under “effective control” – an inflammatory Border Patrol synonym for “operational control” – set off a firestorm of politically charged declarations criticizing the Obama administration’s lack of commitment to border security.

Republican House and Senate members introduced a flurry of bills that aimed to embarrass the administration and to leverage more border security funding. Some Democratic members, particularly those representing border districts, joined the protests about limited operational control and the demands for increased funding.

Especially with borderland politicians, the expressed outrage over border security gaps was at least partially a ploy to secure new injections of border security into their districts. Such funding has functioned as a type of economic stimulus program for borderland congressional districts.

Predictably, the geographic source of much of the outrage over limited operational control and new border security legislation was Arizona. In the House, Arizona Representative Jeff Flake introduced the Border Security Enforcement Act of 2011, which, according to his office, “focused on achieving operational control of the southern US border by increasing border resources.” Arizona senators John Kyl and John McCain introduced a bill by the same name in the Senate.

In May 2012, just as the Border Patrol was preparing to release its new strategy plan, the House passed another border security bill, by unanimous voice vote, called the Secure Border Act.

The lead sponsor of the Secure Border Act was Representative Candace Miller, the Republican chair of the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security. Miller, who represents a border district in Michigan, lambasted DHS: “For far too long our nation has lacked a clear and comprehensive plan to gain and maintain operational control of the borders.”

Miller tied the need for operational control of both the southern and northern borders to national security, saying: “Our common defense begins with effectively securing our borders, and the American people rightly expect and demand that the federal government take the responsibility to secure the borders.”

Over the past three years, the Obama administration has made Arizona’s border the focus of an array of new Border Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration and federal immigration enforcement initiatives. Except for the most mountainous sections, nearly the entire Arizona border is fenced and defined by the Border Patrol as being under its operational control.

Nevertheless, the Arizona state government initiated its own Build the Border Fence project. The state government-sponsored project highlights the failure of the Obama administration to ensure that the entire border is under “operational control.

Border Security Consensus Means Less Accountability

A deep reserve of support for operations and policies that have anything to do with border security runs across the political spectrum. Whether at the federal, state, or local level, there exists near unanimous bipartisan support for border security.

Even in military and national security arenas, no comparable level of Republican and Democrat advocacy for border security can be found. This consensus, which extends to liberal critics of U.S. immigration policy, helps explain why the Border Patrol has not been held accountable for its wasteful programs (particularly its high-tech ones), failure to undertake cost-benefit evaluations, sloppy strategic thinking, and superficial risk-management processes.

As a rule, Republicans are more hawkish about border security than Democrats. Generally, support from the political right for border security is driven by a combination of anti-immigrant backlash, alarm of alleged spillover violence, xenophobic convictions, and opportunities to bash the failings of the federal government. Standing out for their critique of border security framework and the border security buildup are economic libertarians and free-market ideologues.

Among centrist and left-center nongovernmental advocacy organizations concerned with immigration and Latin America policies, there has also been widespread acceptance of the new homeland security and border security frameworks for border policy and operations. Some advocacy and policy organizations may find the security framework distasteful but they accept it as a post-9/11 political reality.

Especially among Washington, DC research and policy institutes, border policy reform initiatives aim to make border security operations smarter, more humane and less wasteful without questioning the concept that the border needs to be secured. In some respects it is a matter of pragmatism over principles, but to a large degree there is unquestioning acceptance of the security framework for border policy.

As a result, DHS and CBP – and to a lesser degree, state-based border security initiatives – can count on a far-ranging continuum of support for border security. Left of center, border security is widely regarded as a politically necessary precondition for successful immigration reform. Important exceptions to the acceptance of border security policy within the NGO community are drug policy reform, environmental and human rights organizations.

In Congress, conservatives, moderates, liberals, and progressives generally have shared an enthusiastic support for border security policy and funding. Especially in the borderlands, there is fervent bipartisan support for border security funding – based less on any demonstrable improvement in public safety and more on the indirect economic benefits from the infusion of border-related funding, whether it be for more drug task forces, injections of federal funding in local law enforcement budgets, or the array of DHS construction projections.

The $100 billion plus in border security funding since 9/11 has led to the rise of what some observers have called a border industrial complex.

The upshot of these political and economic factors is that, while there may be great skepticism about the focus and cost effectiveness of many border security programs, particularly the mainly high-tech projects, there is little political will to hold the Border Patrol accountable.

Yet the time for true accountability for the Border Patrol and the upsurge of border security programs may soon be coming. For one thing, in times of deepening deficits and reduced income, federal funding is increasingly a zero-sum game. Billions for border security translates into billions less for other programs dear to politicians and constituents.

Fortunately, the resonance of anti-immigrant political rhetoric has diminished, in part because of the decrease in immigration and in part because of the adverse political consequences for politicians who have embraced anti-immigrant rhetoric and statutes. This erosion of the anti-immigrant political base has resulted in decreased resonance for border security alarmism.

Concerns about drug consumption and drug-related violence have also driven the border security buildup. No doubt there is still widespread public concern about illegal drug consumption. At the same time, however, support for legalized marijuana is steadily expanding.

And while drug-related violence continues in Mexico, the alarmism about spillover violence is increasingly dismissed because of the lack of substantiation about such crossborder violence and because of the enviable public-safety conditions in the borderlands – whose cities and rural areas have among the lowest crime rates in the nation.

Also contributing, albeit marginally, to decreasing popular support for more border security funding is the growing realization that the illegal drug seizures by the Border Patrol and other border security operating outside the ports-of-entry are almost entirely marijuana. The Border Patrol describes the Arizona border as a “high risk area,” yet more than 95% of its drug seizures are of marijuana, a natural substance that generally only dogmatic moralists consider a “dangerous” good or a threat to the country’s security.

As the concerns that led to the border security buildup – border-crossing foreign terrorists, high illegal immigration flows and spillover violence – the enthusiasm for border security and the uncritical support for new funding are diminishing. One result may be more sensible border policies, and another consequence may be increased demands in Congress that the Border Patrol be held to much higher standards of accountability.

No doubt the United States needs a cogent and comprehensive policy to regulate and control its borders. But this policy should be the result of careful consideration of the country’s social, commercial and security needs – rather than being based on opportunistic politics and broken immigration and drug policies.

Reefer Madness on the Border: Past and Present

Tuesday, 11 December 2012 00:00By Tom Barry, Truthout | Op-Ed

• font size   
• Print 
• Email

The federal government's nearly 100-year-old move toward cracking down on marijuana consumption with regulation, enforcement, and prohibition has resulted in a boom in marijuana smuggling, drug-war violence and mass criminalization and incarceration in the US. Perhaps it's time to change direction?

Could the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its border protection agencies end their fixation on marijuana control? No one knows what lies ahead, but DHS and the US Border Patrol may want to look to past border control practices of its legacy agencies as a guide to extricate themselves from their current billion-dollar-plus commitment to the marijuana drug war on the border.

Today, for DHS and the Border Patrol, marijuana is the moral and legal equivalent of transnational organized crime. Moreover, marijuana is regarded as a security threat to the homeland. Over the past five years, as the flow of illegal immigrants has diminished to historic lows, the Border Patrol is mostly on the lookout for marijuana.

Also see: Securing the Homeland Against Marijuana

The Border Patrol's border security buildup, including more agents, drones, and fences, has resulted in record quantities of seized marijuana and tens of thousands of Mexicans, Central Americans and US citizens arrested for violation of federal drug control statutes. Marijuana is a "Schedule 1" controlled substance, the same as heroin, under federal law.

In press releases and Congressional statements, the Border Patrol routinely points to record-breaking quantities of weed seized and presumably destroyed. Last year, the Border Patrol boasted that its commitment to border security on the southwestern border yielded 2.53 million pounds of marijuana. These seizures, declared the Border Patrol, are a direct strike against what it formerly called the drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) in Mexico, which in the past couple of years have been relabeled as transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).

Marijuana seizures, along with the apprehensions of those illegally crossing the weed across the border (usually in bundles tied to their backs), are successes in the border campaign to "disrupt and dismantle" the TCOs. In other agency releases, the Border Patrol prefers different alliterations. 

The agency's Arizona-based Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT) aims to "deny, degrade, disrupt, and ultimately dismantle criminal organizations and their ability to operate; engage communities to reduce their tolerance of illegal activity." Alternatively, the Border Patrol sometimes deploys other "d" words, saying its drug war operations aim to "detect and deter" TCO activities.

The Border Patrol doesn't say how many members of the TCO leadership have fallen to the agency. But it does regularly issue press releases lauding drug war seizures and arrests.

What's so striking about these figures is that these drug war victories only rarely involve illegal drugs other than marijuana.

Measured by the weight, the Border Patrol in 2011 seized 2,529,211 pounds of heroin, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy along the southwestern border. 

The marijuana seizures weighed 2,518,211 pounds - comprising 99.3 percent of the total. Measured by the number of seizures of these illegal drugs, marijuana constituted 93.5 percent of the total of Border Patrol drug seizures between the ports of entry along the US-Mexico boundary.

Since the early 1990s, the US government has been stepping up its efforts to control drug flows across its borders. Until 1914 - when the US Congress passed the Harrison Act, the first in a mounting number of federal anti-drug laws - there was little effort to control narcotics (such as heroin and opium), stimulants (such as cocaine), or psychoactive plants (such a marijuana). In the 1890s, you could even order a syringe and a small stash of cocaine through the Sears & Roebuck catalog - for $1.50 plus handling.

As addiction rates increased, calls for a crackdown against heroin, cocaine, and opium mounted after the turn of the century. As the support for drug prohibition expanded, marijuana was largely ignored. Cannabis could be grown almost anywhere, but most of the weed crossed into the United States from Mexico. Marijuana, or "marihuana," is a portmanteau word, joining the Spanish names María and Juana. Thus, the English nicknames Mary Jane and Mary Warner.

The drug prohibition era began through the implementation of tax and certification regimes - not with a zero tolerance mandate. Initially, it was widely accepted in Congress and among law enforcement agencies that there were legitimate medical uses for opiates and even stimulants.

The Harrison Act of 1914 aimed to end the recreational market for heroin, opium and cocaine, but was not intended to stop physicians from prescribing narcotics. The Harrison Act was self-described as "An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes." 

Although the objective of the Harrison Act was to regulate the domestic market, the legislation ushered the Customs Agency Service - later Customs Service, currently divided into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) - into drug control in a major way for the first time, both because the agency was empowered to enforce the act at the border and also because this first foray in drug prohibition legislation led to a boom in cross-border drug smuggling.

Marijuana was not on the radar of drug prohibition proponents at the time the Harrison Act became the law of the land. By the 1930s, however, drug prohibition advocates had succeeded in instituting marijuana bans in many states. The anti-marijuana movement was in large part a backlash against demographic, racial, and cultural changes. The violence and disruption of the Mexican Revolution caused many Mexicans to flee north, and some of these immigrants introduced the recreational use of marijuana to US society.

Assertions that marijuana use led to crazed violence by Mexicans and African Americans were common in the Congressional hearings on drug control in the 1930s. Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger introduced in the Congressional record a letter to the editor of a newspaper in Alamosa, Colorado, that stated: "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions."

What the antimarijuana campaign called the "marijuana menace" was the subject of the 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness, which affirmed common beliefs among older and white Americans that marijuana was driving the youth of America crazy and into alien cultures, like the jazz of African-American and other vanguard musicians.

But the US government didn't see marijuana as the threat to public health, safety, and national security that it currently does. At the time, community healers and the medical sector were still exploring the medicinal and therapeutic uses of marijuana, and US businesses were legally selling hemp fiber, oil and seeds.

In its Narcotics Manual of 1927, the US Customs Agency Service stated: "Neither is there any federal law specifically regulating the importation of Marihuana, but by regulation under the Food and Drugs Act, Collectors of Customs are directed to refuse delivery of all consignments of Marihuana, unless the importer shall first execute a penal bond conditioned that the drug referred to will not be sold or otherwise disposed of for any purpose other than in the preparation of a medicine."

The federal government gradually began cracking down harder on marijuana distribution, both in the domestic market and on the border. The US Border Patrol was created in 1924, but it was not until the late 1930s that the agency was given a clear mandate about marijuana enforcement.

Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which brought cannabis into the drug control structure established by the Harrison Act for heroin, opium and cocaine. A high tax was levied on marijuana distribution by this 1937 drug act, the main proponent of which was Anslinger, the antidrug crusader who was commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Under the provisions of the Marijuana Tax Act, the federal government made marijuana control its business for the first time - through regulation of the importation, cultivation, possession and marketing of the cannabis plant.

Although it was not explicitly prohibited, the antinarcotics legislation put marijuana for the first time in the same regulatory framework used to crack down on heroin, opium and cocaine - whose principal victims were the poor and people of color, not predominantly middle- and upper-class consumers.

It remained legal to import marijuana into the country, and the US Customs Agency Service did collect taxes and affix a certifying stamp on burlap bags of marijuana that met its requirements for legal use and sale. But the end result was that marijuana fell subject to an increasingly restrictive regulatory climate that by 1970 had evolved into complete drug prohibition.

President Richard Nixon became the first drug warrior in the White House. Under his leadership, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, under which marijuana was classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. That means, according to the federal government, the substance has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted use in medical treatment in the United States and can't be used safely - even under medical supervision. Other Schedule I substances include peyote, DMT, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA (ecstasy), and heroin.

At the time that Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, the US Customs Service Agency was not preoccupied with securing the border against cross-border flows of marijuana, as the Department of Homeland Security is today. The agency's narcotics manual noted: "Marihuana may be cultivated or grown wild in almost any locality. Inasmuch as this drug is so readily obtained in the United States, it is not believed to be the subject of much organized smuggling from other countries."

But the federal government's steady move away from noninterference toward regulation, enforcement and prohibition has resulted in a boom in marijuana smuggling, horrific drug-war violence in producer and transition countries, and mass criminalization and incarceration in the United States.

Today, the Customs and Border Protection agency, especially the Border Patrol, has made marijuana enforcement the chief operative focus of its border security mission. 

One can only speculate at what point the federal government will begin reversing its border control practices, perhaps by once again taxing and stamping marijuana imports. Or even - with the advance of a medical marijuana and marijuana legalization - end the agency's misguided and ineffective commitment to marijuana enforcement entirely?

Recalling the scenario described in the narcotics manual of the mid-1930s, we may see the future of marijuana.

It just may be possible that some day, sooner than we think, we could see a time when marijuana is again grown throughout the United States outside of a drug prohibition regime, thereby displacing Mexican and other foreign suppliers, ending the need for so much "border security" spending and undercutting the foreign drug warriors – both the legal and illegal ones.

Raise Your Hand if You Don't Support Border Security

Memorial in Agua Prieta for U.S. college student shot in back 

by Border Patrol in Douglas, Arizona /Photo by Tom Barry

There’s renewed bipartisan consensus in favor for some type of immigration reform. Yet this emerging post-election bipartisanship exists in the shadows of an almost enthusiastic bipartisanship in favor of increased border security.

Within Congress, there is no – really absolutely none -- opposition to border security policy and operations, despite persistent waste, lack of due diligence, corruption, immigrant abuse, and inability to set forth a strategy and performance measures.

In Congress, there are differences about border security but these are largely limited to questions about just how many more agents, drones, walls, and surveillance systems are needed.

President Obama set the bottom line of the debate, when speaking about the need for immigration reform. In late November, he told the media: "I think it [immigration reform] should include a continuation of the strong border security measures that we've taken because we have to secure our borders.” 

The president will encounter no opposition on that point, although there were be many congressional members in both parties who will be lobbying for even more border security spending than the Obama administration has authorized  – in part because border security has proved popular politically and in part because of the infusion of pork-barrel spending in border areas.

The broadening political consensus for immigration reform is hopeful. Bipartisan border security, however,  is not a sign that political gridlock is ending but rather a sure sign that the traditional bipartisanship over security spending issues continues to taint politics and fiscal responsibility.

Bipartisanship is the rule not the exception when security issues are involved. That’s a sorry tradition in U.S. politics – a tradition that since 9/11 has expanded beyond national security to include homeland security and border security.

Uncritical Acceptance of Border Security

At first, the post-9/11 fear of foreign terrorists drove the multi-billion dollar campaign to “secure our borders.” The buildup continued even as the fear diminished,  and as counterterrorism experts (and common sense) concluded that it was unlikely that foreign terrorists or weapons of mass destruction would enter the country across the southwestern border – the focus of the new border security operations.

Yet Congress and the White House kept increasing the border security budgets – not so much to obstruct terrorists but to “secure our borders” against immigrants, driven by the mounting anti-immigrant backlash during the second Bush administration. More recently, border hawks – and the Obama administration – explain border security operations mainly in terms of the drug war or what’s now called the “combat against transnational crime.”

Since 2005, when Congress began debating comprehensive immigration reform, a key factor in ensuring wide support for the border security buildup was, oddly, the assumption that the imperative to “secure our borders” was a necessary precondition for immigration reform.

The uncritical – and largely enthusiastic – backing for more border security has cost the nation more than $100 billion over the last ten years. It has left a legacy of national shame and monumental waste in the form of useless virtual fence projects, embarrassing walls between north and south, a mounting toll of dead and murdered immigrants, and an escalation drug war throughout the U.S. and Mexican borderlands even as political pressure is mounting throughout the hemisphere to end drug prohibition.

Aside from the near total absence of strategic focus, the border security buildup has been an insult to good governance. Again, the uncritical acceptance of border security has resulted in systemic abuse of the standards of accountability, transparency, and performance evaluations.

Rather than once again giving a free rein to the border security hawks, the coming immigration represents an opportunity to assess the assumptions and achievements of the continuing border security buildup. Without such a critical examination of border security, the proponents of immigration reform / border security become accomplices of the waste, human rights abuses, and drug war escalation that have become emblematic of the Border Patrol.

As part of the new movement for immigration reform, advocates and activists need to stand up and reject the implicit political marriage of immigration reform and the border security buildup. That doesn’t mean open borders but rather a stance in favor of sensible border control and regulation, not virtual militarization.

It would be unfortunate if progress on immigration reform gives border security a free pass, leaving mounting questions about the waste, militarization, misdirection, and lack of accountability in U.S. border policy unaddressed and unresolved.