National opinion: Trump’s border policy: Speak loudly and carry no stick

Like many Americans of all political stripes, I am deeply troubled by the chaos at our southwest border. Although Trump wants you to believe that his proposed quick fixes will alleviate the chaos, his dangerous cluelessness on immigration in general and the border in particular will likely only increase the chaos. Voters looking to Trump for answers to the myriad complex problems associated with border security had best look elsewhere.

Since descending the “golden escalator” in 2016, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated an appalling lack of understanding of even the most fundamental facts and principles relating to immigration and border security. I have spent much of my professional life involved with port, border and global supply chain security including a stint as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Drug Enforcement) where I served simultaneously as the Deputy Chairman of the government’s Border Interdiction Committee. I was also privileged to have worked on National Security matters at the White House for two Republican presidents. I am no “progressive.”

Trump has strong opinions on border security and immigration. Unfortunately, they are almost entirely wrong. A staple of his approach to border security is “the wall.” As one of Trump’s heroes, General George S. Patton, once said, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man.” The wall is symbolic of a closed border but is functionally useless. Large structures built on uneven, shifting ground along swiftly flowing rivers like the Rio Grande are often structurally unstable. Numerous sections have toppled as a result of strong winds or erosion. Even those intact sections have been easily scalable. Smugglers often cut through big sections of it. It is America’s Maginot Line and is just as ineffective.

Trump is also wrong when addressing the human aspect of border security. He rages against migrants, asserting (without a shred of evidence) that they are predominantly criminals, fugitives from insane asylums, murderers, rapists, and transporting drugs. I can’t address the validity of Trump’s claims regarding the troublesome past of some migrants; suffice to say that in any cross-section of humanity one is likely to find some bad people. One thing I can address is whether migrants crossing our Southwest Border are frequently carrying drugs. That is nonsense.

Drug smuggling organizations are businesses. They function as such. They are in the business of transporting large quantities of extremely valuable product over vast distances and international borders. They ship in bulk and hide their product within the legitimate stream of commerce moving through largely overwhelmed air, sea, and land ports of entry. In the relatively rare case that a “load” is detected and seized, it is basically taken as a business loss and the costs associated with the loss will be passed down the supply chain.

Migrants seeking asylum at our Southwest Border are almost never carrying drugs. Normally, they have trekked for hundreds of miles, often on foot, and, if they are lucky, they have a couple of bottles of water, some dry clothes, and a cell phone in their backpacks. They don’t have kilos of fentanyl.

Also, Trump likes to paint a picture that migrants seeking asylum at our Southwest Border are flooding America’s cities. The cold reality is that the overwhelming number of illegal migrants in the United States are people who presented themselves at a port of entry, were admitted and simply overstayed their visas.

Despite Trump’s tough talk, he has done more to harm long-term border security than any politician in recent memory. In torpedoing a bipartisan border deal earlier this year, he deprived those of us committed to border security of the tools we need, like more Border Patrol agents, advanced drug detection technology, and desperately needed immigration judges and staff, among much else.

That is Trump’s approach to the border in a microcosm: talk a big game but make the chaos much worse.