Border Primer for Dummies

Border Primer for Dummies

Soft underbelly

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            Real truths are self-evident.

            Cicero cut through the liberal tendencies of Plato and Aristotle to describe governance restrictions as the formula for lasting happiness. His principles became so revolutionary he was considered dangerous and was murdered by the goons of fellow Roman, Antony. His beliefs, though, remain in the Republic and Laws writings. Well being would be perpetuated only by what he described as natural law.

            Centuries later, John Locke, advanced the Cicero prescriptions when revealed in his own beliefs through words:

            “The law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, Legislators as well as others. The Rules they make for man’s actions must … be comformable to the law of Nature.”

            History may demonstrate the migration away from natural laws in the study of the Mexican border. It is there our government has repeatedly shunned its own laws and regulations. Essentially every president with the possible exceptions of Hoover and Eisenhower breached the trust and principles establishing the sovereignty of the border. The others left Americans standing in peril, and citizens actually affected have long known the implications of the corruption of laws involving security enforcement.

            Cicero predicted the outcome of denigrating basic, natural law. “Whoever is disobedient (in standing firmly with natural law) is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature,” he said. “And, by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment.”

            Woodrow Wilson is a best example. Wilson was so worried what Texas Rangers would do to World War I German saboteurs entering the ‘soft underbelly’ of the United States, the Mexican Border, he used the press to set the stage for his own defense to denigrate those ruffians in order to reduce unfavorable world opinion of him and his administration if something embarrassing happened.

            To Constitutionalists, he emerges at the extreme apex of political buffoonery.  To be so smart, he was guileful. To those of you in Brooks, Hidalgo, or Cochise Counties, that means he was … one artifice son-of-a-bitch.

            Primer

            Aside from the Bible, the Constitution sets the stage, the whole stage, and nothing but the sovereign stage of a most enduring model for natural law in the history of mankind.

            It doesn’t say, “The border between these United States and Mexico must be enforced as if it is a true international border”. It does say Congress must provide for the common defense, repeal invasions, protect each (state) against invasion, and give consent to the States to engage in war unless actually invaded. It promises each state all privileges and immunities of all other states, and, upon application, defense against domestic violence. It also sets forth the duty of the President, to the best of his ability, to faithfully execute the Office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

            A comprehensive review of constitutional adherence to those mandates as they apply to We, the People on the border should convince even artifice sons-of-bitches that the breach of trust promulgated and fraudulently fulfilled by this government on border lands is appalling. There is nothing even remotely suggestive of American unalienable rights being given a priority. There is only the glaring dereliction of sworn pledges to the Constitution by elected officials.

            It is time THEY understand the border.

            For the most part, the border is not controlled by the United States. It is controlled by the drug cartels. Except those areas impacted by the Department of Defense (DOD) administration, border ingress and egress outside of Ports of Entry from Brownsville to San Diego is a disproportionate cartel imposed management function. Texas notwithstanding, the most lucrative portals are concentrated on lands administered by the United States land management agencies.

Those routes are dangerous and they are guarded and controlled through immense violence by the cartels. When arrayed against all other lands impacted by the border, they exist in a vacuum where neither free and independent men nor DOD is the primary steward. Management is rendered unto agendas and missions. It is classic management of the commons, and it is there, in the confusion and absence of stewardship, the cartels have filled the managerial vacuum and thrived.

            The grand vacuums, the Arizona class smuggling corridors, all have specific and repeatable physical characteristics. Those are:

-          The corridors  have east-west highway access north and south of the land mass,

-          they have rugged and complex north-south mountain and drainage orientation which provides guarded channels of movement,

-          all corridors have high, strategically located points of observation,

-          the concentration of American private property rights at risk is limited or constrained with the absence of resident American domiciles,

-          they are dominated by federal land agency management,

-          and, they have designated wilderness and or de facto wilderness managed safe havens.

A smuggling corridor exists each and every time those characteristics are present

and or duplicated by managerial fiat. The phenomenon is repeated in each established corridor and where proven features of Border Patrol enforcement actions are missing.

Those features, developed through years of experience include the following:

-          The Border Patrol must have adequate boots on the ground (trained and capable personnel),

-          the extensive use of the correct technical equipment is necessary (technology),

-          the freedom and unconditional infrastructure component of leadership and intelligence is essential (infrastructure control and freedom), and

-          the ability to go anywhere, any time, with speed and without constraint is imperative (mobility).

If any one of those conditions is impaired or conditionally allowed, results

plummet. Constraints placed upon the Border Patrol that depart from those mainstays are disruptive and contribute directly to corridor creation and or expansion … every time and every place.

            The 80-20 rule

            Under the current strategies, the effective capture rate of illegals entering the United States is all over the board. Officials of the National Association of Retired Border Patrol Officers believe the rate of human trafficking capture in some of the Arizona corridors is as low as 15%. For the purpose of our discussion and to avoid speculation and argument, let’s assume the actual rate of capture bests that by three or 45% of illegals entering the U.S. are captured.

            The metrics of actual capture equate to the 80-20 rule which implies that 80% of those captured will be caught within the first five miles and the remaining 20% will be captured within 25 miles of the border. Those not captured within that 25 mile buffer are, for all intents and purposes, home free. If our arbitrary 45% capture rate is near correct and applied to the Arizona model in the Tucson sector, some 1100 illegals per border mile are lost into the American populous annually. That suggests 286,000 illegals including the good, bad, and worse are finding a way into our country from that border segment alone. That also means that, if the Border Patrol must give up anything over the first five miles of buffer, another 46,800 illegals would join the 286,000 to boost the Tucson Sector contribution to the American calamity of adding 332,800 illegals to the rolls annually.

            Factoring the New Mexico metrics into the model, and, including the presidential proclamation parameters of the newly designated Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument where illegals will be fair game only within the first five mile border buffer, an additional 11,600 illegals annually will gain entry due to invoked security constraints.

            Regardless how that is explained away, those numbers are not only staggering … they serve as the expanding security demise of our country.

            The rest of the story

            It was Churchill who repeatedly used the term ‘soft underbelly’ when he attempted to coerce his preference of strategy for invading Europe in World War II. He wanted to come from the Mediterranean where he believed the vulnerability of Nazi strength was greatest as opposed to a cross channel attack on the continent.

            Based on the growing American prowess at fighting a war, the Churchill demand implicit in attacking the ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe was to be a final gasp at maintaining British dominance in the prosecution of the war. As historian Michael Howard described, the phrasing became a slogan rather than a strategy.

            The juxtaposition of the matter and its comparison of those who are now maneuvering to do harm to America cannot be ignored.  We can only imagine if southern Europe had been successfully invaded by an unopposed army of 11,600 plus another component of 286,000 on a 400 mile front. That is exactly what this government is allowing each and every year in a similar swath of America’s ‘soft underbelly’, but this time … the slogan may well be the real strategy.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “There are no niceties intended or implied. This government has practiced unabridged, dereliction of Constitutional duty, and … the least of the potential atrocities will commence when any attempts to close those existing trade corridors begin.”