NDN Backgrounder: 21st Century Border Initiative Southwest Counternarcotics Strategy

NDN Backgrounder: The 21st Century Border Counternarcotics Strategy

Today Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other senior Obama officials are going to the border to make an announcement on the 2011 Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy.  

As background to this announcement, NDN and the New Policy Institute (NPI) is offering up some of its recent work advancing the strategy of creating a “21st century border” between the United States and Mexico.   This new strategy between the two countries is focused on letting more of the good things we want crossing the border – legal human crossings and trade – to grow, and more of the bad things – drugs, guns, bulk cash and illegal migrants – to slow.  

The numbers tell the story.  Mexico is now America’s second largest trading partner.  The goods moved between our two countries this year will be just about equal to what we trade with China, and is greater than what we trade with the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan combined.  Our 2,000 mile border is the busiest border in the world, seeing around 800 thousand legal crossings a day. 

Today, in continuing the Obama Administration’s push to make the southwest border safer, senior administration officials are unveiling the 2011 National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy.  This strategy increases coordination and information sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, and calls for continued close collaboration with the Government of Mexico in their safety efforts.

This effort is part of the Southwest Border Initiative which has made the border between Mexico and the United States safer.  This includes:

• Nearly doubling the number of Border Patrol agents from approximately 10,000 in 2004 to over 20,700 today.
• Screening  100% of southbound rail shipments.
• For the first time providing critical surveillance capabilities to personnel on the ground through unmanned aerial systems that cover the Southwest border from California to Texas.

Over the past two and a half years, DHS has:

• Seized 75 percent more currency.
• Seized 31 percent more drugs.
• Seized 64 percent more weapons along the Southwest border as compared to the last two and a half years during the previous administration. 

Additionally, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has:

• Allocated nearly 29 percent of its domestic agent positions to the Southwest border.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has:

• Increased its federal agents on the border

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has:

• Secured a record number of extraditions from Mexico: 94 in 2010 compared to 12 in 2000 and trained over 5,400 Mexican prosecutors and investigators

NDN's background materials, which can be found on 21st Century Border Initiative page on our website, include video interviews with leaders in the border region, speeches by prominent Administration officials including DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and NDN’s analysis and commentary.  There is a strong body of evidence now which suggests that this new “21st Century Border” strategy has already shown promising results, leaving the region safer, slowing the number of illegal crossings,  while seeing trade and commerce between the two countries expand.