In a speech delivered Thursday at the annual convention of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, in Tucson, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Alan Bersin roundly praised the country’s defense of its southern border. Bersin argued that, although CBP agents have apprehended over 100,000 undocumented migrants attempting to cross into Arizona this fiscal year, this number is down from what the agency was seeing a decade ago. He also referred to public concerns over violence at the border as “overblown,” considering this violence has yet to cross over into the U.S.
Bersin’s speech immediately drew criticism from those who see his outlook on the current situation in Southern Arizona as overly optimistic. Many argue that to say border violence has been contained on the Mexican side of the border is much too simplistic. Just last year, Tucson sector Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a gunfight in Nogales, Arizona. According to authorities in that city, Terry’s death marked a single incident in a stream of assaults, robberies and rapes, many directed at undocumented individuals and thus left unreported, that have recently plagued that city.
In addition, stories continue to pop up in the news of U.S. citizens working in Mexico as members of drug cartels. And it has also been documented that the vast majority of weapons used by drug cartels in Mexico are purchased from arms dealers in Arizona and elsewhere along the border.
Bersin argues that Arizona simply is not experiencing “spillover violence,” such as what occurred recently in Monterrey, where a casino was bombed. This has led others ask, does this mean that we need not be concerned in the U.S. about border violence until people show up dead at Tucson’s Desert Diamond Casino? In short, it appears to many that the U.S. is deeply involved in violence at the border, regardless of whether or not the majority of violent acts have occurred in Mexico
It is clear that the current situation in Mexico would not be the case if not for the participation of the U.S. as consumers of drugs, sellers of guns and even suppliers of gang members. And it is also clear that violence has already begun to creep over the border into the Southwestern U.S. Until U.S. authorities begin to work binationally with the Mexican government to develop solutions to the current problems, this violence will only intensify on both sides of the border.
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