Republican president-elect Donald Trump opened up his campaign with a speech about our “unsecured” border, saying that the illegal Mexican immigrants coming into the United States are “bringing in drugs” that are “poisoning our blood,” amongst other equally controversial and provocative statements. Now that he has been elected, will the wall– which may manifest as a fence or an abstract idea– effectively keep drugs out of the country? It is less than a month until Trump takes office. When his transition team asked where the promised wall could be erected, officials tasked with the job are reportedly considering fencing on parts of 1,900 mile border. In the report by the New York Times, Texas representative Henry Cuellar and others share the view that it is simply physically impossible to build a wall around the city of Laredo, Texas. Even if they succeeded in building the “big, beautiful wall,” would it manage to keep illicit drugs from being smuggled across the border and into the other side? The current trend in smuggling is to build vast, expansive tunnels underground that transport narcotics and other drugs across the border. In April 2016, the DEA seized the largest tunnel to date, at an estimated length of eight football fields, or 800 winding yards. If the border has altered smugglers tactics of crossing the border with drugs even without building a metaphorical and physical monolith separating the two countries, there is…
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