The Washington Times published an editorial on violence on the border that emphasizes hyperbole and rhetoric, but lacks nuance and fact.
The full editorial can be read here. However, there is one section in particular which much be addressed as the facts presented are very misconstrued:
Homeland Security’s plans for a few more agents hardly offset a proposed June pullback of the 1,200 National Guardsmen deployed after the Krentz murder. “When the secretary of Homeland Security withdraws the National Guard from the border after they’ve been doing such a good job, we don’t know if they are really serious about securing our border,” Republican Sen. John McCain warned at a Tucson press conference.
According to information presented in the editorial, Secretary Napolitano has, “promised to deploy 250 additional agents, with another 300 to follow if the agency’s fiscal 2012 budget is approved.” What they don’t mention is that those numbers are in addition to the historically high numbers of personnel already on the ground.
A key concern identified by this quote is the 2012 budget approval. The Congressional GOP currently in the majority have called for cuts to DHS in the 2012 budget (a full list of cuts can be found here). These cuts would, among other things, directly affect the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to deploy more troops to the border. The requested cuts are particularly ironic, given that both Arizona Senators have requested a total of 3,000 National Guards Troops, according to the editorial. Last year Congress and the Obama Administration passed the Emergency Border Funds Supplemental bill which brought unprecedented levels of resources to the border region.
What is especially troubling about this editorial, is that while there is no mention of the positive steps taken to make the border safer, there is also no acknowledgement that the if the GOP is successful in cutting the budget to DHS, then virtually all of those steps will be frozen in place or in some cases scaled back.
After years of investment by the federal government along the border between the United States and Mexico there has been significant progress in creating a more harmonious region.
These improvement have happened due to unprecedented amounts of resources allocated to the southwest border. This investment has led to a drop in crime along the U.S. side of the border with little spillover of violence from Mexican cartels, a historic number of deportations of criminal undocumented immigrants, an increase in narcotics seizures, and a leveling off of illegal migration into the U.S.
Given such results, it is hard to criticize the merits of the DHS’s strategy, which has demonstrated results.
