Trafficking in People: What Solutions?

Thank heavens Republicans, Democrats, and the President were able to come to an agreement to at least temporarily reopen government, even if it is only for three weeks. At least the 800, 000 workers who have gone without pay will not only now go back to paying jobs, but will also receive very much needed backpay. Our prayers continue for them and their families.

In his remarks about this temporary agreement, though, President Trump used his time to make yet another pitch for the Wall. Well, we’ve heard his claims over and over again, and in this blog (as well as many other blogs and outlets), these claims have been reviewed … mostly. One that I personally have overlooked, however, has been his claim that thousands of human trafficking victims are smuggled across our southern border.

My apologies go out to the President and his supporters for this tragic oversight. Human trafficking is an extremely horrible problem involving tens of thousands of individuals “trafficked into the U. S. yearly,” according to the U. S. Department of State. And, indeed, the “Department of State also expresses that Mexico is the primary country of origin
for trafficking victims…” So, we do have a problem here, no doubt about it.

The U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency recently reported:

In fiscal year 2016, HSI initiated 1,029 investigations with a nexus to human trafficking and recorded 1,952 arrests, 1,176 indictments, and 631 convictions; 435 victims were identified and assisted.

Impressive though this is, when comparing the above figures with the total number of individuals being trafficked into the country annually, we clearly have an awful lot of work to do, including better securing our southern border. How is this best achieved, though? Is the President correct in surmising that a strong, tall border wall from “sea to shining sea” will almost completely cut out human trafficking into the United States?

Several important factors in combatting human trafficking from Mexico involves Mexico itself, that is: Need for increased awareness, the strengthening of anti-trafficking laws, greater dedication to the enforcement of those laws, more compassionate response to and support of victims, and other necessary changes. Beyond this, though, there are some actions the United States can take.

According to Human Rights Along the U.S.-Mexico Border, which is a compilation of articles written on the subject, there needs to be “a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy so that more people can come to the U.S. legally, instead of risking their lives and their livelihoods upon entrance.” The proponents of this idea also argue for “more effective usage and promotion of T-Visas.”

Another source, “Prostitution and Trafficking of Women and Children from Mexico to the United States,” argues that U.S. policies need specific improvements, including amending the requirement that “the burden of proof falls on the victims to show evidence of force, fraud, or coercion,” increasing victim services, and building stronger bilateral approaches with Mexico.

Another possible solution to this admittedly tragic problem is to build a wall along the Mexican border, which is just what President Trump has proposed as an almost fail-proof deterrent to illegal crossings … so the claim goes. However, Dr. Alexandra Still of Pepperdine University notes that “this option also is expensive, would take years to complete, and most likely would not be effective.” She continues to explain:

Migrants who are desperate to come to the U.S. … will find a way to continue coming … (so) this wall could prove useless in time. Furthermore, if this policy option did, in fact, lower levels of trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico, it would also trap people in vulnerable situations in Mexico, and it might increase trafficking between Mexico and other countries. This option violates all three criteria because it does not protect vulnerable persons, it is not enforceable, and it could increase tensions between the two countries.

Doubtless debate will continue on how best to counter human trafficking, but there are probably better options than building an extremely expensive wall that might ultimately prove ineffective anyway. For now, each of us should be both aware and vigilant. If you are in the United States and notice any suspicious activity in your community, call the ICE Tip Line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE. For more information visit https://www.ice.gov/features/human-trafficking

Also of interest, and consulted for this article, is Pepperdine Policy Review: Solving Human Trafficking Between Mexico and the United States by Alexandra Still.

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Beyond Washington, What Do the Locals Say About the Border ‘Crisis?’ Part II

In yesterday’s “Beyond Washington, What Do the Locals Say About the Border ‘Crisis?’” we looked at what New Mexico and Arizona residents, local papers, and Border Patrol officials have to say about the President’s proposed Wall and the alleged “crisis” at our shared border with Mexico. Today, let’s at least glance at the State of Texas, especially since POTUS just visited there to drum up support for the Wall, and see if we can get at least a bird’s eye view of what the situation looks like from there.

President Trump visited the city of McAllen, Texas on Thursday, January 10th, to advance his case for his promised Wall along the Southwest border as an essential necessity in combating illegal immigration, especially focusing on drug smuggling and other contraband, terrorism, gangs and other critical problems allegedly tied directly to illegal immigrants crossing over from Mexico. His simple point remains the same as it has since at least 2015: The U. S. needs a wall all along the Mexican border for security.

If this is true, then one might logically expect the fairly elected mayor of McAllen to agree with the President. One might reasonably expect the mayor to fully support the President’s assertion that there is, indeed, a “crisis” at the border … but this is simply not the case. Following Trump’s visit, McAllen’s mayor, Jim Darling, told Time pointblank, “We don’t feel a crisis in our city… We live day to day in a very safe community.”

Darling further pointed out that McAllen is “a vibrant area” and “the safest city in the state of Texas, and we’re right on the border, so that kind of rhetoric,” about crisis, “resonates and sells newspapers, but it hurts our area.” He added the fact that McAllen had “no murders last year in a city of 150,000…” In a city of that size, especially along a border in “crisis,” one would expect things to be grimmer.

Furthermore, Julie Hillrichs, who represents a coalition of border mayors, judges, and other officials, told Time that “the real way to increase security at the border would not be a wall, but increased investment in the legal ports of entry that already exist in their area. ‘We have never supported the wall,” Hillrichs says. “The Border Coalition has consistently over the years stated we believe the wall is a wasted investment.'”

But the Attorney General for Texas, Ken Paxton, claimed fencing along the border in El Paso has helped to substantially reduce crime in that city, which, he further claimed, had previously had one of the highest crime rates in the nation. “After that fence went up and separated Juarez, which still has an extremely high crime rate, the crime rates in El Paso now are some of the lowest in the country,” Paxton said. “So we know it works.”

El Paso may not quite agree, however. In a January 10, 2019, article the El Paso Times investigated the AG’s claim and found that this is simply “not the case.” The paper further, and importantly, explained:

Looking broadly at the last 30 years, the rate of violent crime reached its peak in 1993, when more than 6,500 violent crimes were recorded. Between 1993 and 2006, the number of violent crimes fell by more than 34 percent and less than 2,700 violent crimes were reported. The border fence was authorized by Bush in 2006, but construction did not start until 2008. From 2006 to 2011 — two years before the fence was built to two years after — the violent crime rate in El Paso increased by 17 percent. 

Point in fact, in January 2018, community leaders and law enforcement officials in El Paso credited a number of developments, programs and efforts that have resulted in lowering crime rates … not border fencing. 

Meanwhile, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with President Trump during his Thursday visit to McAllen, except it wasn’t really a discussion. Saenz said, following the event, he felt rather “disenfranchised” because he was, quite frankly, not able (or allowed) to make any contributions whatsoever. On Friday, January 11th, the Laredo Morning News reported him saying:

There was a disconnect. Maybe he (Trump) gets information, but really he ought to take into account the border leaders, the mayors and county judges – input that he didn’t get because there was no opportunity for us to provide that information… We need to make our own evaluations locally to come up with the best plan.

The editorial board of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times judge the proposed Wall would be “like setting fire to billions of dollars,” and that “money would be better spent on stronger administration and enforcement at the ports of entry and better technological monitoring of the remote places where Donald Trump envisions a tall physical barrier.” In its December 2018 article, simply concludes that the Wall is “not the solution.”

Once again, seemingly not much support for the Wall, at least along the borders in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll take a look at California, or more appropriately southern Cal, to gain some local perspective there. So far, though, it seems folks along the border, with the majority of Americans, favor better and tighter border security, but by other more effective means than a wall.

Beyond Washington, What Do the Locals Say About the Border ‘Crisis?’

There have been a few articles on how residents along the Mexican border feel about the proposed Wall, illegal immigration and related issues. For example, the New York Times recently ran one entitled, “On the Border: Little Enthusiasm for a Wall,” on January 9, 2019. But I’d thought I’d do some snooping around myself, so I began with newspapers in Arizona and New Mexico.

I thought, reasonably enough, that if there’s really a border crisis with a flood of illegals crossing every day, smuggling in drugs and weapons, trafficking in sex and generally putting the lives of everyday, ordinary Americans at high risk, then of course I’d run across articles and editorials about this issue. In doing so, I also limited myself to local opinion and perspective. In other words, no nationally syndicated news or op-eds.

To make this research easier on myself, at least initially, I utilized the convenient “clearing house” of newspapers provided by USNPL. I also narrowed my research, this time round, to the states of Arizona and New Mexico, leaving the much larger states of California and Texas to tackle independently at a later date. Finally, I made any and all local news reports on immigration-related issues top priority — that is, above opinion articles.

Well, I searched a little over 30 newspapers and, much to my surprise, found only five that in any way addressed the Wall and/or border and/or illegal immigration issues. Only five out of approximately 32, if my count is right. That is, only about 15.5% of the local news sources I examined had anything to say about these issues, even after the President’s address on what he continues to describe as our “border crisis,” and all but one was an opinion-editorial.

This rather shocked me, to say the least, and it may seem unbelievable to some … but that’s why I provided the above link to USNPL. This site lists newspapers in all 50 states, so anyone if free to conduct their own research and correct me on my findings. In fact, I heartily welcome any and all contributions to this discussion. For now, though, what did I find? In short, the following:

In a recent statewide survey, of which results were published January 10, 2019 in The Arizona Daily Sun, fully 40% of residents said education was their top concern followed by immigration and border security at a distant 29% and healthcare at 8%.

In an op-ed published by The Fountain Hills Times, local resident and editorialist Ann Schweers bluntly said, “The assertion that there is a crisis on the border with thousands of terrorists and criminals apprehended is false. They are playing with statistics to instill fear.”

Susan Sanders of Green Valley, Arizona, had to say this about the Wall and border security in an op-ed for the Green Valley News on January 10, 2019:

We don’t need more physical wall. Those who work and live along the border know its ineffectiveness. Physical walls have proven damaging to the environment, to personal property, to business, to tourism and they are downright unfriendly.

We do need border security…

Eventually, we need immigration reform with consistent and enforceable laws!

The Albuquerque Journal editorial board noted in its January 5, 2019 opinion article that it is a “fact (that) immigrants commit fewer crimes than their U.S.-born peers,” but also argued that “border barriers in some form would help with the humanitarian crisis by sending the message we do care about border security and funneling crossers into safer, more manageable areas…”

The editorial board of the Sana Fe New Mexican also stated in its January 9, 2019 editorial that “clear statistics … show undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.” They also went on to point out:

Trump said the wall is needed to keep out illegal drugs; most drugs come through official ports of entry, not along the border between entry points. As we have pointed out before, too, illegal immigration is hardly a crisis, despite Trump’s claims. Border crossings are at their lowest point in decades. The humanitarian crisis Trump said he is addressing has been caused by his administration’s wrongheaded policies.

Finally, another perspective, which, although published in the Wall Street Journal, nevertheless comes from local Border Patrol agents. In its article published back in 2016 the Journal reported:

[S]ome border patrol agents like (Matthew) Eisenhauer, who typically work in remote areas, see it differently. Eisenhauer told CBS News that a “great wall” is not really the solution.

“Border fortification means a lot of things in different areas,” said Eisenhauer. “In areas where we can’t have a physical structure, we use the environmental challenges to funnel traffic into certain areas to identify and apprehend [individuals] in a more effective manner.”

And in the same article, Joe Agosttini, the assistant port director in Nogales for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, asked rhetorically, “Do you think a wall is gonna stop them from coming in?” And then answered himself, “The fact that you have a house, would that stop a burglar from coming in … I used to live about 30 feet from the fence, OK? I’ve been seeing these things for 30 years.”

Perhaps tomorrow, or sometime in the fairly near future, we’ll take a look at California and Texas, probably separately (!) to see if we can drum up some local perspective on the wall issue in those states, but again, it shocks me to find so little about this “crisis” from local news outlets. One would think that if their communities were being overrun and endangered, the local papers, so very dependent upon local advertisers and subscribers, would consistently cover this unfolding, tragic drama. What I found instead, by and large, were the newspapers of relatively quiet, sleepy little towns reporting common, everyday, ordinary news you’d expect to find in small town newspapers.

To Build or Not to Build: Educate Thyself

As controversy continues to swirl around Trump’s proposed border wall ~ THE Wall ~ along the U. S. — Mexican border, and with 1/4 of the government shutdown over the issue, including 800,000 federal employees now going without paychecks, it is perhaps a good idea to take a step back and look at some salient facts in considering whether or not building this proposed barrier would be a good idea or not. In fact, it’s always best to educate oneself on an issue before jumping to conclusions … as so many on both sides have been doing for more than two years now (at least).

So, what do we have to consider? First, a couple of practical facts:

The length of the U. S. — Mexican border is 3,145 kilometers, or 1,954 miles (take your pick! LOL)

The southern border extends across four U. S. states, including 24 counties, and traverses desert, mountains and rivers, including the 100,000 square mile Sonoran Desert, the hottest of all North American deserts, which extends along the Arizona border over into California, as well as most of Baja California and the western half of the state of Sonora, Mexico. 

Read more: https://www.desertusa.com/sonoran-desert.html#ixzz5bw911x00

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimated the cost of a border wall at about $22 billion, and would take more than three years to complete, according to an article by Reuters based on the same DHS report.

The Wall is said to be necessary as an effective deterrent to illegal immigration. Here are some interesting facts about recent illegal immigration according to the Pew Research Center’s November 2018 article, “5 Facts About Illegal Immigration in the U. S.” Quoting straight from the source:

There were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2016, representing 3.3% of the total U.S. population that year. The 2016 unauthorized immigrant total is a 13% decline from the peak of 12.2 million in 2007, when this group was 4% of the U.S. population.

The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants (has) declined since 2007, (while) the total from other nations changed little.

The U.S. civilian workforce includes 7.8 million unauthorized immigrants, representing a decline since 2007.

A rising share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade. About two-thirds (66%) of unauthorized immigrant adults in 2016 had been in the U.S. more than 10 years, compared with 41% in 2007. A declining share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for less than five years…

Would the Wall effectively reduce the inflow of illegal drugs? This from Politifact, also quoting a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as well as the co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

“Traffickers have a variety of mechanisms at their disposal on how to overcome the wall,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Some of those tricks are outlined in a 2016 Drug Enforcement Administration report. Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations “remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States,” and their most common method of smuggling drugs remains vehicles legally coming through U.S. ports of entry. Illegal drugs are smuggled in concealed compartments in passenger vehicles or blended with legitimate goods in tractor trailers, the report said.

Smugglers also attempt to get drugs into the United States using catapults, drones, boats and tunnels. At least 225 tunnels were discovered on U.S. borders from 1990 to March 2016, according to the DEA.

“Traffickers have been very innovative in finding strategies to circumvent existing walls and border control thus far, and more of the same strategy (i.e. more of a wall) doesn’t offer much promise as a successful strategy,” said Rosalie Pacula, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

Also of some possible interest might be the sheer number of U. S. citizens involved in drug smuggling across the Mexican border (as compared with non-U. S. citizens.) The Daily Beast ran an article on this subject back in 2013, in which they rely upon reports and statistics from “an analysis of records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.”

Of at least equal importance is the possibility, or some claim reality, of terrorists crossing over the southern border into the U. S. Is this true? And would The Wall prevent them from infiltrating the country? The threat may be real. This from a January 2017 Christian Science Monitor article:

From November 2013 to July 2014, officials apprehended 143 individuals listed on the US terror watch list trying to cross the Mexico border and enter the US illegally, according to a confidential Texas Department of Public Safety report obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

And last summer, the US military’s Southern Command warned in an intelligence report that Muslim extremists were using existing migrant smuggling rings in Latin America to gain entry to the US across the Mexico border, according to an account in the Washington Free Beacon.

But significantly, in an interview with White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace pointedly contradicted the claim that terrorists are flooding in over the Mexican border, according to the New York Post:

“Special Interest Aliens are just people who come from countries that have ever produced a terrorist. They’re not terrorists themselves,” Wallace said to Sanders after showing a clip of (Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen) Nielsen’s remarks.

“And the State Department says that there is, quote, their words: ‘no credible evidence of any terrorist coming across the border from Mexico,’” he added.

The 2016 report referred to by Wallace states very clearly:

Counterterrorism cooperation between the Mexican and U.S. governments remained strong. There are no known international terrorist organizations operating in Mexico, no evidence that any terrorist group has targeted U.S. citizens in Mexican territory, and no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.

Finally, it is worth noting that there are other proposals for combating illegal immigration, such as that made on Scientia Media back in 2010. This is merely one of many examples, but the point here is simple: The Wall is not the only possible solution to the problem of illegal immigration.