Border Wall Essay: Analyzing the Efficacy and Unforeseen Consequences

Customs and Border patrol know how drugs enter. In an interview on National Public Radio on April 6, 2019, Gil Kerlikowske, former director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2017 and former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2009 to 2014 said that over 90 percent of drugs that illegally enter the US “…almost universally come through the ports of entry along the southern border…and then the second way is through the international postal mail service” (All Things Considered 2019).

Since government officials know that most illegal drugs enter the US concealed in large shipments through a legal port of entry, not in small amounts hidden on individuals trying to climb over a border wall, they also must know that building a bigger wall will not stop the smuggling of drugs.

In the same way, building a bigger wall will not stop the trafficking of humans as most human trafficking occurs inside the US once immigrants have crossed the border legally. According to Polaris, an anti-trafficking group which operates The National Human Trafficking Hotline, a federally funded project, “Human trafficking happens in the United States, to people who are already here, to citizens and to foreign nationals. In our experience, having handled nearly 50,000 cases of human trafficking over the last decade, we know that the vast majority of victims who cross a border and are then trafficked in the United States arrive here through ports of entry and other legal means. Many fly here and travel through U.S. airports” (Polaris 2019).

As this information indicates, American citizens are trafficked on US soil, so building a bigger wall will not stop that. Also, the trafficking of foreign nationals is connected to the issue of the number of illegal aliens in the country because many victims enter legally then overstay their visas. Once again, a stronger border wall will not stop this. However, there are some ways to solve the smuggling issue. While building a bigger Mexican-US border wall ignores the other 280 legal points of entry to the US, improving the system for border searches, including improving drug detection in the US mail, at all points of entry would decrease the number of illegal drugs entering the US and would increase the likelihood of catching human traffickers.

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