America needs safe and secure borders and immigration polices
that work. The Heritage Foundation has long advocated that the
solution is a combination of sensible security, workplace
enforcement, and legitimate opportunities to work in the United
States. A visit to the border shows that these recommendations are
more important than ever.
Border Basics
A five-day visit to Texas, meeting with state and local
officials, and seeing conditions at the border first-hand puts the
challenge of keeping America safe, secure, and prosperous in
perspective.
The United States shares about 2,000 miles of border with
Mexico, and about 1,200 of those belong to the Lone Star State.
That has pluses and minuses for the state. Last year Texas made
$150 billion from border trade, but crime in border communities has
also mushroomed. Cartels are fighting over control of the smuggling
corridor that runs through the state. The cartel war is brutal;
there is nothing going on in Baghdad that hasn't been tried on the
border--kidnapping, bombings, beheadings. Going after the gangs has
to be a top priority. Dealing with illegal immigration is part of
the mix. Serious criminals hide in the 500,000 individuals who
illegally across the border each year. A significant drop in
illegal crossings would allow law enforcement to focus resources on
criminals victimizing people on both sides of the border.
In addition, two to three million people who crossed the border
are living illegally in Texas. That's about 20 percent of
the unlawfully present population in the United States, and the
public benefits they receive (like education and emergency room
care) are a crippling burden on local communities.
Real Answers
Federal, state, and local law enforcement have run a series of
interdiction operations along the border and in the interior, using
community policing and investigations to identify, target, and
disrupt human and drug smuggling operations. What is most important
about these efforts is that they show what needs to be done to
really ramp up border security and what can be achieved. Operation
Rio Grande, launched February 2006, for example, reduced all crime
by an average of 60 percent in sheriff-patrolled areas of border
counties.
While there has been much emphasis on building walls and having
guards to patrol the border, that alone is not the answer. A
"static" defense cannot keep up with a "dynamic" enemy that is
always thinking of new ways to cross the border. Active
interdiction and investigative operations that target smugglers and
smuggling routes show a lot more promise. The U.S. needs to take
these to the next level with operations that provide a persistent
law enforcement presence up and down the border, not just in Texas.
The Heritage Foundation proposes that this can be done if Congress
and the Administration:
- Allocate homeland security grants to help beef up community
policing on the border.
- Broaden state and local law enforcement participation in the
287(g) program. Established by Congress, the program offers
responsible ways to assist the federal government in support of
immigration enforcement by allowing states to enter into compacts
that train and certify local law enforcement in conducting
cooperative investigations and operations with Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents. The program should be expanded by
encouraging states to join and providing additional resources,
training, and leadership.
- Integrate state and local law enforcement into SBI Net, a
federal effort to establish an integrated system of detection,
information-sharing, and management of border enforcement
operations. Border law enforcement agencies, for example, need
better communications, aerial surveillance, and night vision
capabilities. Some of these needs could be met efficiently and
effectively by SBI Net.
America's borders are broken, but a trip to the border offers
plenty of evidence that sensible policies can meet the challenge of
fixing them. Congress should put the issue of implementing a
sensible strategy front and center in its consideration on
comprehensive immigration and border security reform.
James Jay Carafano,
Ph.D., is Assistant Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for International Studies and Senior Research
Fellow for National Security and Homeland Security in the Douglas
and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation. Dr. Carafano visited the border earlier this month.