Here’s the thing about “securing” the border. It’s never going to happen. For one thing it’s just too big. Secondly there are too many powerful interests that have a major stake in an “open” or “unsecured” border. These would include everyone from the CEOs of multi-national corporations, to cartel leaders in Mexico and drug dealers in the US, to smaller firms and companies addicted to cheap illegal labor. But there is a massive sense of urgency in America about drug related violence on the border as narcotics flow north and guns flow south.

And where there is urgency, there are political points to be scored by the players that know the game. National Guard troops, the Meridia Initiative, and Boeing’s border fence have had far less impact in terms of reducing illegal immigration as the state of the American economy has.

Recession and high unemployment are better deterrents to illegal entry than any level of enforcement. But that has not stopped the powers that be from putting on the same old show – more personnel, more inter-agency cooperation and task forces, and more good money after bad. Giving money to Mexican police and military officials to fight the drug war is like giving an alcoholic fifty bucks in front of a liquor store in the hopes that the addict uses the cash to enter a program.

Perhaps the best folks to ask about whether the solutions coming out of Washington D.C. are having any impact on the border are the folks with their boots on that dusty ground. In Nogales, Arizona, federal agents spend their days tapping on car windows and opening trunks looking for drugs and illegal human cargo. “We’re sucking up a lot of exhaust out here,” supervisory Customs and Border Protection officer Edith Serrano told a reporter from the Associated Press.

For the past several months, hundreds of agents participating in a newly intensified $95 million outbound inspection program have been stepping into southbound traffic lanes, stopping cars and trucks that look suspicious. In a massive investigative report, the Associated Press sent reporters to the busiest crossings along the Mexican border – San Diego, Nogales, El Paso and Laredo – to see how effective the “beefed-up” inspections are.

The reporters basically came away with similar impressions. Border Patrol and other federal personnel found lots of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into car doors, stuffed under mattresses and taped on to people’s bodies. What’s just about impossible to find is drugs bound for the US and guns bound for Mexico. “I do not believe we can even make a dent in (southbound smuggling) because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they’re not.

Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?” Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents’ union, told the AP. The outbound checkpoints the AP personnel observed stopped about one out of four cars sometimes, and other times about one out of 100. That’s not every day, though. Sometimes no checks take place.

“To be honest, it’s a crapshoot,” said Jose Garcia, deputy special agent in charge of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego told the AP. “You’re rolling the dice when doing this without intelligence.” But Garcia likens the situation to marijuana laws in the U.S.

They don’t have an impact on rates of use or related crime, but that’s not the point. It’s about sending a message. “You’re letting people know, ‘Hey, we’re a strong presence. We’re not going to just roll over,’” Garcia said.

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