An American Lion

You have to shake your head when you see things like this:

A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers.

Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo.

But among the small fraction of trucks that are inspected, authorities have found multiple loads of contraband, including nearly 13 tons of marijuana seized in a three-week period last spring.

Some experts now question whether the program makes sense in an environment where drug traffickers are willing to do almost anything to smuggle their shipments into the U.S.

The trusted-shipper system “just tells the bad guys who to target,” said Dave McIntyre, former director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M University.

The program works like this: Participating companies agree to adopt certain security measures in exchange for fast entry into the U.S. They are required to put their employees through background checks, fence in their facilities and track their trucks. They also must work with subcontractors who also have been certified under the program, which is run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

Any sensible screening policy has to disregard a “trusted” trucking status and screen everyone and everything as it comes across the border—even little old ladies, mewling brats and it has to engage in, yes, “profiling” in order to work. You have to look at everyone the same way. As soon as a supposedly “secure” conduit into this country opens up, drug smuggler money can corrupt anyone at any given time. The reality behind smuggling is this—always try to find a secure way into the country that bypasses scrutiny and guarantees the arrival of the shipment. As soon as you create something akin to that, then that’s where the smugglers are going to try to put their material. Now, if you thought this up just to catch smugglers, and use it to tear into their organizations as well as to attack corrupt shipping companies, fine, have at it.

You call this a war on drugs? It’s a war on common sense. It corrupts anyone and everyone. It accomplishes nothing. It’s worse than whack-a-mole in that there’s precious little whacking and the mole gets away every time.

I suspect that whoever thought up the trusted shipping company program has no idea how the world really works.