America Needs to Get Serious about Border Security

Mexican cartels growing more powerful as Mexico’s ruling class dithers.

Back in June, the U.S. State Department sent out another release telling American travelers to avoid the towns of Tamaulipas and Reynosa due to recent cartel violence. Whenever a massacre or act of mass violence occurs halfway across the world, the major news networks blow it up all over the headlines. Yet the violence happening in Mexico, our neighbor, usually never breaches the news cycle for average Americans.

If you think it is because there is really no news of concern, you should think twice.

The warnings in June were issued at the same time as thirteen individuals connected to the murders of fifteen people were arrested, including Ivan Alejandro N., a “major leader  of a Gulf cartel cell” in Tamaulipas according to Border Report. The most disturbing parts of those killings was the fact that they were individuals killed at random, with no known connection to the killers or cartel at large. “A U.S. security expert says” according to Border Report, that “the attacks appear to be the result of a fight inside the Gulf cartel to control the flow of drugs and migrants north and guns and cash south in the Reynosa corridor.”

Tactics to combat cartel violence such as AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” strategy is not going to cut it to confront threats. Mexico is turning into a failed state and cartels are filling in the vacuum. This could potentially spill over into the US.

Say what you want about him, but Donald Trump was right. It’s necessary for the U.S. to build a wall and take border security more seriously.

Never ending wars and nation-building outside the United State’s sphere of influence have made it so that our elected officials and the bureaucratic defense state ignore the immediate security threats on the other side of our southern border, ranging from drug cartels, human traffickers, and other criminals seeking new prey in a new nation.

While the mainstream media tried to occupy your attention with ISIS-K in Afghanistan over the past month, they’ve wholeheartedly ignored the bad actors right next door. The Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) is the fastest growing cartel in Mexico and is responsible for conducting operations in states like California, Florida, and New York and relies on military-grade technology. Its assets total roughly $20 billion. 

These aren’t your daddy’s cartels either. These criminal enterprises learned to start using drones and other technologies that would shock you. Constantly adapting to new challenges, the cartels didn’t stop operating during the lockdowns in North and Central America, using the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate their hold over Mexican civil society. 

Any type of power vacuums in authority will also be assumed by the cartels. An armed and capable criminal enterprise which matches the firepower and political influence equal to that of a standing government (such as Mexico) could be used as proxies by external actors such as Russia and China, to name a few foreign actors who would benefit from a distracted United States who would have to directly confront the issues in their own backyard. This isn’t in the realm of conspiracies either; The Iranian government through Hezbollah worked with various cartels to smuggle individuals into the United States through Mexico as recently as 2020.

The U.S. will need to engage more with populist leaders such as El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele in order to stem the current migrant tidal waves traveling northward.

Any serious discussion regarding national security starts at the southern border, but it doesn’t appear to be making a Biden administration press conference any time soon. Ideally, capable and effective military use-of-force by expanding the role of military special operations and domestic law enforcement should be used to carry out punitive actions against cartels operating in our country and along the U.S./Mexican border. A forceful deterrent is necessary in order to not only show that the buck stops at the border, but to protect as many innocent lives as possible.

The U.S. will need to stop chasing monsters abroad, and start confronting the very monsters that are at our border. The present ruling class’s policies have created this situation at our border, which America’s rivals will undoubtedly exploit.

Now more than ever, the U.S. should embrace retrenchment and bolster its border security infrastructure.