Mexican drug cartels and Tammany Hall

Mexican drug cartels and Tammany Hall

It’s no surprise that immigration issues are back in the news. They never really went away, but the topic du jour is a section of the United States Code, known as “Title 42.” The law in question grants law enforcement organizations, at the direction of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the ability to deny entry to asylum seekers if they pose a risk of introducing communicable disease into the country. Officially, the measure was imposed in 2020 to prevent the further spread of Covid 19. It may well have served that purpose, but it has also served as an arrow in the quiver of those trying to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into our country.

However it’s used, title 42 is set to expire on May 23 and the lawsuits are flying. As of this writing, the courts have decided in favor of those who wish to keep the measure in place, but there is currently no word as to whether the administration will appeal that decision.

The Title 42 debate is just one skirmish in a larger public discussion about our immigration policy and its many incarnations throughout American history. More recently, it has become a bladder evacuation contest between open-border enthusiasts on the left, and law-and-order conservatives on the right.

The fringe left has become so frustrated with reform efforts that they simply choose not to enforce laws as they currently stand on the books. On the right, legislators refuse to pass thoughtful reforms until current laws are enforced and the borders are secured. When I was a kid, the situation would be termed as a “Mexican Standoff,” but I don’t think that phrase is allowed anymore. Suffice it to say, that we are dealing with two headstrong groups of legislators who feel more comfortable with unproductive gridlock than compromise for the greater good.

The think tanks and talking heads, if nothing else, come prepared with facts and figures that are so exorbitant that I find them difficult to comprehend. In 2017, the Pew Research Center (which I have found to be generally free of political bias) estimated that the foreign-born population in the United States was a bit over 62 million individuals. 45% of those were naturalized citizens. Another 27% were classified as “lawful, permanent residents and 5% were “Temporary Lawful Residents.” So, in 2017, 77% of our immigrant population are here legally. That’s good. We can be happy about that. The remaining 23% were deemed “Unauthorized.” For those of you keeping score at home, 23% of 62 million is 14.26 million souls, or for comparison, more than seven times the population of Nebraska.

Since that time, illegal immigration has increased. Apprehensions of illegal migrants at the southwest border hovered around the 400,000 mark throughout most of the twenty-teens but doubled to 800,000 in 2019. In 2020, that number dropped back down to 400,000, due in part to the onset of the Covid 19 virus, but the aforementioned title 42 is credited with playing a role in that reduction as well.

As we look at the 2021/2022 numbers, we need to note that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) works on a fiscal year that runs from October through September.

USCIS reported 1.5 million border apprehensions in fiscal 2021, and in 2022, we are told to expect a record 2.1 million apprehensions. Officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tell us that we are off to a lively start with 221,000 border apprehensions in March of 2022 alone.

The discussion of this huge influx of humanity is a reminder that many of these individuals are shepherded here by smugglers (aka “coyotes”) in cooperation with Mexican and Central American Drug Cartels. I have no illusion that all of these disparate groups are working in cooperation with each other like villains in a Batman movie, but if it’s not a single organized effort, then it is at least the work of several entities that have the organizational wherewithal to manage the logistics of transporting people, drugs and weapons across multiple national boundaries.

As I think of cartel activities, I am reminded of the Tammany Hall syndicate of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We might remember mentions of the Tammany order, more formally known as the Society of St. Tammany from our high school history books. Tammany, you may recall, was a political organization founded in the late 18th century that played a pivotal role in Irish immigration and the rise of Irish-American political power.

The Tammany Hall organization offered comfort, care and networking opportunities to new immigrants with an understanding that the favor would be returned at the ballot box. An Irish immigrant arriving in New York in the early 19th century would be greeted at the docks by a fellow Irish expatriate with a familiar brogue and helpful tips on where to live and find employment. The opportunities for graft notwithstanding, the Tammany patronage model has been viewed generally as a positive, free-market reaction that enabled the settlement and political empowerment of the Irish diaspora. My Irish brothers and sisters won’t appreciate my comparison between the relatively benign graft of the Tammany’s Boss Tweed with the ruthless terror of human trafficking and fentanyl distribution, but I wonder just how many organizational similarities exist.

Meanwhile, back in our century, interest in government by the very cartels who deliver migrants to our border is well documented. Off-record statements from border agents saying that the “cartels control the border” are hyperbolic, but the known corruption of government control by drug gangs, combined with a general acceptance of cartel-funded coyotes by border authorities lends credibility to the notion. In Mexico and Central America, the cartels have been known to infiltrate, corrupt and terrify officials at all levels of government and stories of political assassinations are as frequent as they are disturbing.

Fortunately, we have not yet seen evidence of widespread political violence on our side of the Rio Grande, but it stands to reason that having shepherded hundreds of thousands of individuals to our border, the cartels have networks in place to carry out nefarious activities in the United States. Why then would that not extend to a patronage system like that of the Tammany organization?

As the situation unfolds, we naturally ask why the left is so invested in bringing undocumented aliens into the country. The stated answer usually revolves around compassion for those whose only crime is to want the freedom and standard of living that we take for granted. Personally, I like to think that the majority of those people are sincere in their beliefs, but I also have to question the wisdom of bringing people into a situation where they won’t enjoy the benefits of lawful entry and may spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder and waiting for a knock on the door in the middle of the night. If the immigrants were truly terrorized in their former homes, I suppose that can be an improvement, but it doesn’t sound like freedom to me.

The more cynical answer is that the left expects those immigrants and their progeny to become left-leaning voters. While I think it’s a mistake to assume voters of any particular ethnicity are monolithic in their political beliefs, I don’t underestimate the power of patronage. If the Tammany Hall model holds, our new neighbors can indeed become a substantial political force.

When Donald Trump descended on his made-for-television escalator ride and announced his presidential candidacy, he outlined a number of initiatives on which he would build his campaign. Chief among them (alongside a healthy helping of China-bashing) was the issue of unlawful immigration. Personally, I think he was ill-advised to have led with negative characterizations of individual immigrants as he did. It should have been sufficient to cite national security concerns alone to focus attention to the matter. There will always be a fringe element that views any efforts to control immigration as racist no matter what is said or done, but why add fuel to that fire? Thousands of military-aged males streaming across the border present a potential trojan horse to any organization planning a 911-style attack. Abuse of social services could also have been cited, but the only real crime in question should be illegal entry.

If, as a nation, we want to allow more properly vetted immigrants into the country, we have mechanisms for that in place. We allow a fixed number of legal entries per year, and that number can be raised or lowered as Congress sees fit. We also have processes in place to allow the entry of refugee populations in excess of those legal entry limits.

My hope is that the stalemate will end and that we can adjust our policies to discourage illegal immigration (and its associated criminal activities) and streamline the process of legal migration for those who wish to embrace our American dream. Whatever the outcome, both factions would be wise to recognize that we ignore the Tammany Hall Model at our own peril.

Note to readers: If you are interested in this topic, the amount of available data is staggering. The term “studied to death” comes to mind, so if you are interested in numbers of families vs. individuals, recidivism, or countries of origin (which I find very interesting), I would recommend the following for further reading:

Customs and Border Protection - CBP.GOV

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service - USCIS.GOV

Pew Research Center - PEWRESEARCH.ORG