Connecting the dots in Chicago

 

 

 

"By not controlling our southern border, we are turning cities like Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles into nothing more than shooting zones..."

It was yet another gruesome weekend in Chicago. Sixty shootings leaving six dead and countless wounded. Is it the lack of gun control? Nope - Chicago has some of the strongest gun laws in the country. What is it then, that could turn such a beautiful city like Chicago into a shooting zone, into the murder capital of our country. Drugs. Plain and simple, drugs.

Now I am not naïve enough to believe the violence in Chicago is totally related to drugs. It is not. Absentee fathers, poverty, and other lucrative crime ventures are also factors. However, most crime experts in large metropolitan cities agree on one thing - drugs are the principal reason for crime. Why? The money is just too good, and the availability of drugs is just too easy to come by.

So where in the world does this endless supply of drugs come from? We have the DEA, don't we? Can't we stop it? The fact is, most drugs enter this country from the southern border. Not a guess - a fact. And it has been that way for quite a while. Why do the drug cartels use the southern border? Even though our Border Patrol does as good a job as they can, they catch only 10 to 15 percent of the drug traffic. This attrition is factored into the pricing and risk for the cartels. Drug running becomes a cat and mouse game with tremendous risk coupled with tremendous financial rewards.

I found this interesting tidbit in a DRCnet publication from November of 2001 entitled "Drug trafficking resumes after 9/11 lull"

In the days immediately following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, law enforcement and industry sources reported a standstill on the borders with seizures down dramatically. The presumption was that smugglers were afraid to cross the border in the teeth of the massive security crackdown. By noon on September 11, the entire U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian border had gone from their normal status to the highest alert -- "level one" -- which calls for searches of every vehicle crossing the border.

 

I guess that connecting the dots on this issue leads to a rather obvious conclusion. Rather than have open borders with Mexico, initiating a Level One security posture would seriously crimp the drug traffic coming into our homeland. In other words, since drugs constitute a clear and present danger to our cities, the Department of Homeland Security should make this a top priority. Open borders = high volumes of drugs = more gangs = shootings and death.

Going to Level One would not only stem the drug traffic, it would also make us more secure. Specifically from endless undocumented (illegal) incursions as well as potential terrorist crossings. It will take some time to build the fence. However, we must do it, and now. 

What we can do immediately are two things: 1) Initiate Level One security (if it causes a bottle jam, tough) and 2) Call up the National Guard to back up the Border Patrol. If the President won't do this, Congress needs to find a way to make it happen. Our urban young people, all of our people, deserve much better.