Here’s an enlightening article about corruption at the border from the author of El Narco:
Since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, incorporating Customs and Border Protection, well over a hundred agents and officers have been convicted of trafficking dope or running undocumented migrants. This usually means working with cartels and their affiliates who control drug and human smuggling over the border.
In February, a New York court convicted Mexico’s former public security chief Genaro García Luna of working with the Sinaloa Cartel. A common retort in Mexico is that the rot infests both sides of the border. It’s a valid point. One of the issues I will be exploring in this newsletter is the narco corruption north of the Rio Grande and wherever it leads. And a solid place to start is the CBP – the United States’ first line of defense.
Putting it in perspective, corruption in the CBP is on a much lower level than in Mexico, where entire police forces work for cartels and carry out brutal massacres on their behalf. Yet we don’t know the full extent of CBP corruption. And the fact U.S. agents themselves are waving trucks of dope through raises questions about Washington’s entire strategy on drugs at a time of record overdose deaths.
Did you think all the corruption was in Mexico?
Like that famous first century Jewish philosopher said, ““Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Well, which is it? Is he saying that CBP is rampant with corruption or not? Personally, I dislike the changes that have occurred in that agency in the wake of 9/11, but then, I dislike most every change that came about since then, including the very name of the very agency that supposedly oversees all of this “security,” Homeland Security. Feels like something out of Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. I also believe that the changes that have occurred at border crossings have greatly interfered with relations between Cd. Juarez and El Paso, and greatly affected our daily lives.
The demand that makes this possible is on the US side, rampant drug use and addiction.
But I think rampant drug use and addiction are symptoms of an overlying malaise characterized by income inequality; rampant, rabid consumerism; and a lack of opportunity and social mobility for the working class.
Did I say Late Stage Capitalism? Must have slipped out.
Cry harder. I notice none of you have moved out of this country to a better one with a political system that suits your delicate sensibilities. Waa waa waa. Gitcha summa that Bidenomics and celebrate with your earnings.
Do you run away from your problems?
Have you tried alcohol?