Drug tunnels give border issues new reason for alarm

Nov. 18, 2011
National obsessions blocking work vital to US energy supply apply just as logically to struggles against crime on the US-Mexico border. It’s just a matter of spreading fear.

National obsessions blocking work vital to US energy supply apply just as logically to struggles against crime on the US-Mexico border. It’s just a matter of spreading fear.

State officials in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas complain of federal indifference to the entanglement of illegal immigration with deadly drug trade.

In Mexico, violence among drug gangs has claimed an estimated 45,000 lives since 2006. Inevitably, the nastiness has seeped into the US.

But concern about illegal immigration diminishes exponentially as distance from the border increases. Washington, DC, is a long way from Matamoros.

News from the California-Mexico border suggests a way to end the complacency. It raises issues like those that have turned los norteamericanos in large numbers against hydraulic fracturing and a pipeline linking the oil sands of Alberta with refineries in Texas.

Police recently uncovered a 400-km long tunnel connecting warehouses in Tijuana and San Diego. They confiscated 14 tons of marijuana.

The tunnel has structural supports, electricity, and ventilation. It’s one of dozens authorities have discovered in recent years.

Outside border states, these conduits for wickedness won’t arouse much passion.

But what if people considered the environmental effects?

If drilling gas wells and laying pipelines threaten drinking water, then digging tunnels must do so, too.

Already, dope probably has leaked into water supplies and made innocent thirst-slakers act silly.

And digging creates seismic events. Earthquakes! In California, no less!

And the marijuana was destined to do—what? Go up in smoke—that’s what. Global warming!

Forget the mockery of immigration law. Forget the bloodshed. Forget the danger to innocent people on both sides of the border. Those are local problems.

But tiny environmental risks rally Americans everywhere when made to seem more threatening than they really are.

Here’s the pattern, with a recent twist: Pressure groups start a propaganda campaign. The Environmental Protection Agency announces new regulations on tunnels. And the State Department delays all decisions about immigration and drugs until after next year’s elections.

(Online Nov. 18, 2011; author's e-mail: [email protected])