Sunday, January 6, 2019

Is Border Security Really a National Security Threat?


On April 9, 2018, I published "Will Trump's Troops on the Border Really Help?" that evaluated the effects of having the military at the SW border.  As part of this post, I looked at Apprehensions at the Southwest Border and determined that military presence at the border had little effect on reducing this number.  While looking at 20 years of history on Apprehensions, I also concluded that NAFTA might have made a contribution to 75% reduction in Apprehensions since 2002.

Now that the Government is in a partial shutdown over "border security" with negotiations underway to solve this "problem",  I thought it would be instructive to update this Apprehension data and look at additional data to determine if it supports the claim that there is a National Security Threat.  All of this data was retrieved from US Customs and Border Patrol web site.

First, it will be important to understand two organizational components of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  The Office of Field Operations (OFO) is the largest organization in CPB and is primarily responsible for security at Ports of Entry.  US Border Patrol has the responsibility for security along the border BETWEEN Ports of Entry.  This is the subject that is so much in the news concerning a "wall".  Part of the problem is that "border security" would include Ports of Entry AND the border between them.  The "wall" concentrates on the border between Ports of Entry.  So, if building a "wall" is a National Security imperative, it would be important to see if CPB data supports this claim.

I'll start once again with Apprehensions by Border Patrol, first by fiscal year.


There is a rapid decline from 2002 to 2011 when the Apprehensions fell from 1,600,000 per year to 400,000 per year.  If the number of illegal crossing constitutes a National Security concern, this crisis should have been declared in 1980's and 1990's!  Obviously, this 75% reduction in illegal crossings was  achieved without a complete wall.  

Breaking this annual data down into monthly data can give us plenty of data to look at Apprehensions since Trump took office.  First, I wanted to compare Obama's Administration to that of Trumps's first 2 years.


Most notable here is the lower left corner, highlighted in blue, which shows that Trump's average apprehensions ARE statistically lower that Obama's average.  Again it does not seem that the lowest average illegal crossings, in the last 35 years, are evidence of a National Crisis.


This graph highlights the first two years of Trump's administration to show that, although the average is statistically lower, it is in a steady climb of 89% compounded annually.  Might this again be related to the "undoing" of NAFTA by Trump and, therefore, gives a suggestion of a possible solution to illegal crossings through trade negotiations with Mexico.

Trump often talks about gang members, MS 13 in particular, crossing the border in large numbers as well as a "flood" of drugs.  So I also found CPB data on these areas as well.  First of all, gang members captured in FY 2018 represent only 0.18% of all apprehensions and MS 13 only 0.009%.  This does not sound like a National Security threat to me.  Finally, only 13% of drugs seized were seized by Border Patrol with the remaining seized by the Office of Field Operations (Ports of Entry).  The only exception to this is Marijuana, the amount is twice that seized at Ports of Entry.  However, the amount of marijuana seized between Ports of Entry has been reduced by 80% since 2012 without a complete wall.

In closing, it appears to me that there is absolutely no evidence from CPB to support building any additional wall components, nor yielding evidence of a National Security claim to access wall money by Executive Order.

PS- Just heard Mulvaney on Meet the Press say that there have been 60,000 apprehensions at the border over the last three years!  Not True.  10,000 of this number are called "Inadmissible" which are those people at the Ports of Entry rejected by Office of Field Operations and, therefore, not an illegal crossing.







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