Guest column / By Lee MarilThe border fear index: How to measure border security
Both the administration and its critics rely on the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and on reported by the national media to make their arguments about how secure the U.S.-Mexican border is, and how to make it more secure; Lee Maril contends that the FBI report and the national media do not offer an accurate picture of the situation along the border because they are not nuanced enough; for example, they ignore the fear instilled in border-area residents by the cartels and the cartels’ collaborators, and they do not collect other relevant human behavior data
As the presidential campaign heats up, both Democrats and Republicans continue to argue over illegal immigration, national security, and public safety along the Mexican border. Both parties appear to have more of an eye on next November’s elections than on solutions to what’s really occurring along the 2,000 miles of land stretching from Brownsville to San Diego. The Democrats would have us believe that El Paso, Brownsville, Nogales, and San Diego are all border cities safer than our grandma’s kitchen. In contrast, the Republicans want us to think that these same locales are about as cozy as war zones.
The Obama administration relies on its border policy largely based on its interpretation of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. As proof that the Obama administration is soft on border security and related issues, the Republicans, in contrast, find support for their assertions in individual criminal acts such as the murder of an Arizona border rancher or drug-related kidnappings sensationalized by the national media. For Republicans, American border communities are quagmires beset by Mexican drug violence.
Both political positions on border crime sorely miss the mark. First and foremost, for numerous reasons, FBI Uniform Crime Reports are grossly inadequate measurements of violence along the border. These reports are based upon data which are voluntarily offered to the FBI, in effect assuring that understaffed law enforcement agencies in the poorest border communities, the same communities likely to have the highest rates of crime, are not going to consistently and voluntarily report their locale’s crime data because of lack of time, energy, and resources.
Second, violent crimes against border residents are very likely to go underreported or unreported by victims. Border victims of drug-related crimes, for example, may have little trust in local law enforcement which repeatedly demonstrates close ties with the drug cartels. Just count, for instance, the number of border sheriffs and deputies in Cameron and Hidalgo Counties in South Texas, one border sector with very high drug interdictions, who themselves have been indicted and convicted on drug-related charges. The drug cartels are now strategically recruiting and hiring juveniles in American border communities to do their dirty work, crimes that will never appear in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Finally, the FBI reports ignore the fact that since drug violence is not evenly distributed throughout the border; local law enforcers may tout their low crime numbers in El Paso while at the same time border police chiefs
