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The Mexican threat
Does $400 billion annually sound like a nice round figure?
The trade is buttressed by the "Zetas," a renegade band of U.S.-trained anti-drug commandos from Mexico who have gone over to the other side.
The Zetas, which operate on both sides of the national divide, control Nuevo Laredo, a city of 300,000 across the border from Laredo, Texas. Mexican President Vicente Fox has been unable to regain control of the town. More than 100 murders have occurred this year, including the killing of the police chief, The Washington Times reports.
Getting drugs across the border is relatively easy.
Besides the drug-runners' tunnels, 4.4 million trucks, 90 million private vehicles and 48 million pedestrians cross into the United States annually.
Among the 1.1 million people detained last year for illegal crossings, 3,000 were from Somalia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- breeding grounds for terror.
We're fighting a global war against terror but at the same time opening the portals of the nation to our political enemies and drug merchants tied into the international underworld.
When free trade takes on the character of a suicide pact, we have, before us, a grotesque federal dereliction of duty.
