I don’t know if you’ve been following the trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in New York, but there has been plenty of interesting testimony, especially about how one of the world’s biggest drug cartels goes about importing and distributing its products in the United States. They use a lot of tunnels, and also fishing boats and regular vehicular traffic through official points of entry. The tunnels are obviously used to get under walls and fencing that already exist. Yet, our government is shut down because the president insists that a wall will effectively stem the tide of imported Mexican drugs.
One way of understanding how hopeless of a prospect this is is to consider one of El Chapo’s prison escapes. Obviously, prisons use walls to keep people in rather than to keep them out, but the basic idea is the same. Most prisons are pretty secure, primarily because of their walls. In El Chapo’s case, he was housed in what is considered Mexico’s only true SuperMax quality prison. You can read about his escape in the New York Times and you can see CCTV footage of the moment of his escape here:
He had members of his criminal organization put a house on some property about 0.7 miles from the prison. They then tunneled not only under the prison walls, but directly into El Chapo’s specific cell. Not only that, but they tunneled under his shower stall so that the hole would not be obvious and could be reached by lifting up the shower floor. It’s amazing what you can do with a global positioning system.
Vice News did a good piece on the escape which includes having one of their correspondents go down into the tunnel with a film crew.
Similar tunnels have been connecting Tijuana and San Diego for years. There are technologies that can be used to detect tunnel-building or the existence of tunnels, but Israel presumably employs the best that are available and it still seems to being playing Whac-A-Mole on its borders.
If we build more walls, there will be more tunnels. The reason drugs come into our country is because we want them. We’re addicted to them, and we’ll pay for them. If tunnels fail, they’ll use catapults. If catapults fail, they’ll use drones. They have all the money they need to make investments in defeating our efforts at interdiction. Look at what they spent to bust one man out of prison.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make life difficult for them, but we have to spend our money and resources wisely, and Trump’s stupid border wall is not wise.
So, can we open the government now?
If the Popular Vote Loser wanted the wall, he’d have negotiated away something of value to get it. Or at least tried to do so. He doesn’t want the wall. He wants the fight over the wall. He wants to be seen going to war over the wall. This is all about that, nothing more.
It’s a symbol to his racist base that he still hates who they hate and will do anything to demonstrate that hate.
People looking for persuasion from Trump are always disappointed. Trump practices polarization, not persuasion. His actions are about firing up his side. They’re about raising the stakes.
Agree.
It’s not really about Trump wanting a Wall or believing that the Wall will somehow “work” to reduce drug trafficking – and now, apparently, sex trafficking, etc.
Nay, verily. It’s about Trump getting in a fight and pwning LibTards, plus Trump demonstrating to his hateful, hate-filled base that he’s hurting the correct people who deserve to be hurt.
That’s what his base wants.
Kayfabe, man. Just like in WWF. It’s all Kayfabe, and if the government and/or US citizens are hurt: WIN x 100000!
Yup. A demagogue with no actual talent. The idea of him as a successful “deal-maker” (not to mention biznessman) was comic from the beginning.
I wonder how many thinking people EVER “looked for persuasion from Trump”. The percent that do so now is zero.
Absolutely. Walls and fences can be semi-effective for some purposes in some places. We already have walls and fences in those places, erected by people much more effective at governing than Trump.
Transporting drugs at unmonitored crossings seems hugely inefficient. Reducing that efficiency by constructing a wall wouldn’t really change the net change in drug imports since most of them are smuggled via trucks and boats.
Whatever security measures you put into place, smuggling will occur as long as there is a domestic demand and insufficient supply.
Yes, the tunnel issue is really minor. The vast majority of illegal drugs come in concealed in legitimate cargo. As a matter of fact you can order fentanyl from China and receive it in the mail — the Post Office has no capacity to discover and intercept the vast majority of it. It is also manufactured in the United States. Supply reduction as a drug control strategy is basically feckless, and it’s a distraction from the real problem which is demand.
Reality doesn’t matter At. All. to Trump and his base. Not. At. All.
There’s ample FACTUAL evidence that a continuous Wall across our southern border will do less than bupkiss to allegedly alleviate issues with: a) illegal immigrants, b) illegal drugs, c) illegal sex trafficking, d) illegal whatever, e) illegal Muzlin terrorissss from distant Middle Eastern countries.
I lived in Southern CA. Routinely we’d hear stories about new tunnels discovered running under the border walls/fences there. Some were very sophisticated – dug super deep, had electricting, fans, all kinds of stuff.
It’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that most the illegal drugs are smuggled in other ways – often by various types of boats/ships.
Many of those who become illegal immigrants enter the country legally and then over-stay their visas.
Extending the border Wall will do nothing to alleviate these problems and issues.
But the whole damn thing is about Trump being an asshole to Democrats. The end.
The complicit, 1% owned media, reliably steps in to “blame” everything – all of it – on Democrats. The M$M acts as if the last 2 years of a Republican majority in both the House and Senate never existed.
The M$M almost totally ignores Mitch McConnell’s refusal to put forward a vote on the House bill in the Senate. McConnell gets a complete “pass,” while the M$M acts like Chuck Schumer is somehow the Senate Majority leader.
How will the impasse be broken? I don’t know. It’s beyond frustrating to witness that Orange spooge bucket continue to viewed with adulation by his fan base, but there you have it.
Facts simply do not matter.
Static defenses are always defeated by offensive forces, be they military (from the Wars of Marlborough to the Maginot line, Stalin line, Siegfried line, etc) or economic (Napoleon’s Continental System). As a general “defense” against smuggling, they are futile.
But to use one of your old phrases, “we have won the argument”. Poll after poll shows Trumperian’s Wall has no majority support, far, far from it. But this doesn’t matter, because it is “supported” by an ignorant white minority, Trumper’s stupid base.
Obviously if this had been something that Der Trumper actually wanted, it would have been his centerpiece first bill in Congress in January 2017, fresh from his party’s great “victory”, when they controlled both Congress and Executive. That (as the new CEO of FailedNation, Inc.) he never thought to pressure Ryan’s Reprobates and force senate Dems to filibuster the issue from 2017-2018 shows that neither he nor his Repub enablers cared one whit about Trumperian’s Wall. Indeed, they likely understood its waste, stupidity and unpopularity from the very start.
Only after defeat in the midterms when shutdown and paralysis could be spun as a black eye for Pelosi’s Dems, and a ratcheting up of daily crisis and chaos did this become an “existential issue” and “national emergency” in the eyes of the National Trumpalists. Just as Bushco flouted the national electoral rejection of Repubs in 2006 by escalating forces in Iraq, the National Trumpalists have flouted the election of 2018 by paralyzing the gub’mint and associating incoming Dem power with chaos, impotence and collapse. This is a Repub-manufactured political crisis, not an actual policy battle, obviously.
Note that the person most responsible for the destruction of American democracy—Addison McConnell III—is completely in support of flouting the will of the people to enhance our failed Mussolini’s rancid “image”. As are the rest of the National Trumpalists in the Congress. Party over Country, Always ™.
Trump’s wall is an ineffective solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s like saying I’m going to put ballast tanks on my boat because I want to fly.
The other day he said there is an even bigger caravan forming. So what? These are not illegal aliens, they are asylum seekers; they will be granted asylum or they won’t. Putting up a wall doesn’t solve that problem, but putting more money into processing asylum seekers to make the process more efficient, so that they are not at the border for long, does.
A solid majority of Americans oppose the wall, and oppose compromising on the shutdown by giving Trump money for the wall. A majority blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown. If this is a game of chicken, Trump and the republicans are losing. The longer this plays out, the worse it is for them.
. . . that everything you just said both is perfectly accurate and has been perfectly obvious since The Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief first started babbling about his Stupid Wall.