LAREDO, Texas (AZ Central) – A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers.
Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo.
Some experts now question whether the program makes sense in an environment where drug traffickers are willing to do almost anything to smuggle their shipments into the U.S.
The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets. But some of the 9,500 companies who are part of the system advertise their membership to drum up business, making them targets for smugglers, who can then threaten drivers or offer them bribes.
In a 24-hour period in April, customs officers in Laredo found three tons of marijuana in trucks carrying auto parts across two different bridges. Five days after that, agents in El Paso, Texas, found more than four tons of marijuana in a tractor-trailer hauling auto parts.
Stephen Flynn, senior fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said truckers do not feel safe rejecting bribes, no matter what agreements their companies have made with the U.S. government.
“The basic vulnerability for a truck driver remains the ‘plata-or-plomo’ dilemma,” Flynn said, using Spanish shorthand for taking a bribe or a bullet.
Yet another example of US security being undermined by the dollar. If you create a separate security screening for the haves vs. the have-nots, whether it is a speed pass at trucking border or a express line at the airport, you simply create a better smuggling option for traffickers, who have plenty of money to get the special speedy treatment. There is no fence high enough, no screening perfect enough, and no guard vigilant enough to counter the laws of supply and demand. Malaysia has the death penalty for drug traffickers and yet every year they have to execute some, which suggests to me that even the death penalty isn’t stopping people from getting drugs. Charles Manson was running drugs in a super max federal prison even while he was in solitary confinement!
Legalize it, let us grow it, and you’ll see a drastic reduction in marijuana seized at the border. Trust me.
Topics: customs, Laredo, Mexico, Texas, trucking, Trusted Shipper
out of my nose 3 [...]
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