May
18, 2006
Unmilitarizing
the Border?
By
Jack D. McNamara
"This is not about militarizing the border," said Stephen J.
Hadley,
national security
adviser for the Bush
Administration to CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
Over the weekend the Administration sent spokesmen far and wide to
herald President George W. Bush's Monday night speech to the nation
about the Border Immigration Problem. The only new thing other than a
prime time speech was the assertion that 10,0000 National
Guardsmen would be
deployed to the border, soon.
The problem is a political problem for the President and his party.
They need a political fix to get them through the Congressional
elections in November. The House of Representatives passed a draconian
measure in December (the Sensenbrenner bill) and the Senate Judiciary
Committee passed a more liberal bill a few weeks ago. After
considerable posturing the Senate has now agreed to bring their bill to
a vote. The Senate bill will be more liberal or humane than the House
bill so a conference will have to resolve the differences, maybe. The
President needs a bill, any bill, for his signature before the
elections.
We have been doing this — that is, not dealing with the border problems
— since 1986. President Ronald Reagan was going to fix it. The Congress
passed a bill. It didn't fix anything. Last night the squabbling
continued as both liberals and conservatives came out still fighting
after the President's 17-minute speech.
That we are NOT militarizing the border was perhaps the only clear
message to come through the bafflegab. The Congress has authorized a
$1.9 billion supplemental for widely advertised "border security" and
the President confirmed that he would send 6,000 National Guardsmen to
the border — but after a weekend telephone conversation with Mexican
President Vicente Fox, we are not militarizing the border, Oh, No.
Only minutes before the President spoke the question was on everyone's
lips — What exactly is the National Guard going to do? From entirely
different perspectives Maria Elena Salinas of Univision and CNN's
acerbic Jack Cafferty asked exactly the same question.
As President Bush semi-coherently described it the "Border Patrol will
remain in the lead." The Guard will "assist" the Border Patrol by
"operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing
fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads, and providing
training."
"Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities
...," he said.
The U.S. military has been doing precisely those activities for the
last 20 years here in various strengths. Some hundreds or some
thousands are so employed right now, according to rather imprecise and
conflicting "background" briefings.
Other than the unannouncement of the non-military deployment of a very
combat ready and Iraq-bloodied National Guard to the border, the
President's speech was a recitation of familiar statistics and
policies. The words will reassure those in the Congress that there
still is a Bush Administration and something
will be done.
No one can possibly know now what that something will be, a point
rather clearly made by a CNN interview with Webb County Sheriff Rick
Flores after the speech. How is this increased Border Patrol-National
Guard-State and Local Law Enforcement coalition to work? We don't know
but at least we are consistent. We haven't known for 20 years.
Locally these relationships sometimes work out well when the officers
have the initiative to do so.
But not always.
When Marine Corporal Clemente Banuelos shot and killed Redford goat
herder Esquiel Hernandez in May 1997 we didn't know how things were to
work either. At the direction of the Marfa Sector Border Patrol, small
teams of Army and Marine units were sent to "surveil" notorious Rio
Grande river crossings. At Redford inadequate planning and supervision
led to a teenager being shot dead while herding his goats along the
river. At Porvenir, a short while later, however, a team of Special
Forces soldiers spotted a large marijuana deal conducted by the county
attorney pro tem of Hudspeth County. An alert Border Patrol officer
from Van Horn snagged the perp ... but a fine West Texas jury
later acquitted in Pecos.
Dozens of patrols were conducted without incident and for that matter
without significant results either.
The President did not indicate that the existing precedents here of
Joint Task Force-6 (JTF-6) or any similar model would be pertinent. The
use of the 6,000 National Guard troops appears to be modeled on that of
a temporary employment agency. "Hello, Pentagon? Please send us a dozen
fence builders, two clerk-typists, and one driver for the chief patrol
agent ... Oh no, the driver won't be in the brush along the river where
the coyotes and drug dealers lurk. We need the driver for the coffee
shop circuit ... by Monday next? Thanks...."
A familiar military axiom says, "Never reinforce failure." The U.S. has
puttered along the border for the last 20 years with little effect on
either illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking — or money
laundering, or the sale of body parts, or pirated CDs, or trucks of
human trafficking, or guns....
The worst problem at the moment is in Nuevo Laredo, a border city which
has sunk into anarchy. Newspapers no longer publish reports of
narcotrafficking murders because reporters are killed and kidnapped.
The Mexican Army occupies Nuevo Laredo as someone must because no one
will take the job of police chief.
The U.S. twin city, Laredo, is booming. What makes this unusual?
Laredo-Nuevo Laredo is the point of greatest commerce along the U.S.
Interstate 35 corridor. What is the most efficient route for the North
American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) entrepreneurs is also the most
efficient for the narcotrafficking and the human smuggling gangs.
We are not now and never have been militarizing the border. We have
been paramilitarizing it, meaning that there is no coherent central
authority, only local chieftains who call the temp agency for outside
contractors as necessary.
President Bush implored us to keep the debate civil and ethnically
sensitive. He has said that before and he should be commended. But U.S.
and Mexican border policy is a failure and has been so for decades. No
amount of bafflegab or straw man debates about "militarization" to get
a bill before the next election can sugarcoat that fact.
There was a time when the border was not a problem. At least it was not
seen as a problem. Perhaps we can never return to that complacent time.
But at least we can be honest with ourselves.
(Also
published by the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas May 18, 2006.)
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