The Case for Cartel Wars
15th May 2024
Washington makes a fundamental error when it sees the present border crisis as an immigration problem, rather than the national security problem it has become under President Biden. For border states such as Texas, which bear the brunt of the situation, it’s also becoming a constitutional problem. In January, the US Supreme Court vacated an injunction prohibiting the feds from cutting razor wire that Texas had placed across a 2.5-mile stretch of border near the town of Eagle Pass. Governor Greg Abbott responded by asserting his state’s fundamental right to self-defense in the face of federal inaction, citing constitutional authority. The Texas governor was entirely correct — authority to defend and preserve the polity exists prior to process arguments about who will enforce federal immigration law.
Abbott’s dramatic move invoked a set of 2023 state laws that allow state and local authorities to arrest suspected illegal immigrants; he deployed the National Guard, state troopers and Texas Rangers to take control of Eagle Pass. The action captured the news cycle and snapped the border crisis into sharp relief, making illegal immigration the number one issue of the 2024 presidential election, seemingly overnight.
But there is one topic regarding border protection that even the most stalwart of governors cannot breach, a power reserved only for the federal government — and the only solution that will end the industrialized human trafficking operations that have enriched some Mexican criminal groups even more than the drug trade: we must go to war with the cartels, which profit handsomely from misery on both sides of the border.