WASHINGTON — Arizona’s two senators rolled out a new 10-point plan for toughening border security in their state this week, including more National Guard troops and drones to combat a rising tide of drug-fueled violence and crime along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, announced a proposal that would ramp up many of the measures already in place along their 370-mile portion of the border. That includes deploying an additional 3,000 guardsmen and women and substantially more 24-hour surveillance by unmanned aerial vehicles.
The plan was praised by Arizona law enforcement officials who came to Washington to testify on border security issues, partly in response to the slaying of an Arizona rancher that may have been tied to drug cartels. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said local authorities are overwhelmed and need help from the federal government, including an increased military presence.
“We are a sovereign nation. We have a right and an obligation to secure our border, and that’s why I’m in full support of Senator McCain and Senator Kyl’s plan of deploying soldiers to the border,” he said.
But others critiqued the proposal as either going too far or not far enough.
Bradley Schreiber, a former senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security said the proposal is probably not comprehensive enough to halt the violence on the border. He described it as expanding existing—and largely unsuccessful— measures rather than a new approach to the problem.
“While the senators make some very important additions to what is currently happening, it’s really just a Band-Aid on the dyke ,” according to Schreiber , who now owns consulting firm Homeland Security Solutions, LLC.
Schreiber says the United States needs a comprehensive plan for how to deal with the drug trade that includes other governments in the region besides Mexico. Without that, he argued, a clamp-down on the Mexican drug market would simply send the trade and its attendant problems back to the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
At the other end of the spectrum, Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Derechos Humanos, a group that advocates against militarization of the border, blasted the McCain/Kyl proposal as failing to address the root causes of the problem.
“I think the first order of business is to stop the criminalization both of drugs and human beings and end free trade agreements that displace people in Mexico,” she said.
Although McCain and Kyl’s proposal focuses on the U.S. side of the border, U.S. involvement extends into the Mexican interior. Through the three-year Merida Initiative, the U.S. has committed $1.4 billion in anti-drug aid to the region, with the bulk of the money going to Mexico.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week McCain spoke of the danger to U.S. national security if the Mexican government were to fall to the drug cartels. He reiterated the point in an interview on Monday, following a press conference on border security.
For now, however, it is Washington’s ally to the south that is in dire danger, McCain and others say.
“The president of Mexico has stated that they’re an existential threat to the government of Mexico – that’s what the president said, so I certainly take him at his word,’’ McCain said. “When you have 22,000 of your citizens who have been murdered by the drug cartels, it’s a threat to the existence of the government.”
