The Border Appears Closed, but it Still Leaks
The only way to seal our Southern Border is to bring back the Army
Encounters with illegal aliens on the southern border are at a 50-year low. Last year, the Border Patrol encountered 238,000 people attempting to enter the country illegally, which seems like a lot until you remember the millions who flowed in under the Biden administration. That exercise in demographic replacement was alarming to witness. I remember when the Border Patrol held thousands of migrants under the Anzalduas Bridge in August 2021. It’s Kandahar hot in the Rio Grande Valley in August, so stashing illegals under a bridge or in tents in Anzalduas Park demonstrated gross incompetence by an administration that claimed to be the adults who were missing during Trump’s first term.
I live in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), where views on illegal migration are nuanced. The RGV population is overwhelmingly Mexican American, yet President Trump won all four RGV counties (Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron) in this former Democratic stronghold. The Democratic Party in its current form is woke, which is now synonymous with feminization. Feminized organizations are primarily motivated by group conformity. But the RGV mores are Hispanic, a masculine culture in which respect is earned through a hierarchy of competency.
The anti-ICE-fueled rage spreading through large, poorly managed Democratic cities is easy to ignore because, with the progressive left, the issue is never the issue. The issue in vogue shifts rapidly; one day it’s climate denial, the next it’s vaccine deniers refusing to wear masks. Then Black Lives Matter is the most important thing ever, until Israel started cleaning out the PLO in Gaza.
The issues change constantly, but the target is always President Trump. The second Trump administration has made remarkable progress in dismantling the federal bureaucracy and freeing us from the mandates of anti-scientific, anti-human globalist climate-change grifters. The Department of Defense is gone, and the Department of War has demonstrated the remarkable ability to launch punitive raids that achieve their announced objectives in hours, not years. The tactical competence shown in the capture of Maduro was stunning.
It appears that the tough enforcement of our immigration laws is keeping illegal aliens out of the country, while a sizeable number of illegal aliens already in the country are self-deporting. Yet it is clear that the Trump administration is using up its political capital to conduct aggressive ICE raids. If Trump and his team have calibrated the loss of political support against the results of highly visible, tough enforcement operations, he can still win the midterms. But he would need a clean election with legitimate voter rolls, limited mail-in ballots, and voter ID.
Mexican citizens with a valid passport can cross the border to shop, visit, or conduct business in the Rio Grande Valley without a visa. They can’t travel past the Border Patrol checkpoints, which are 40 miles inland. They also can’t stay indefinitly but many do, so local attitudes about illegal migrants are nuanced, especially when applied to Mexicans. That being said, enough of the Mexican American population immigrated here legally to temper sympathy for people who jump the line without paying their dues.
The flow of illegal migrants has decreased, but illegals are not the primary problem at the border in the RGV; cartels are. Mexican cartels have so much money that they easily buy influence from the powerful, well-connected RGV elites. A raid by federal agents wearing IRS and HSI windbreakers on the law firm of Palacios, Garza, and Thompson in Edinburg illustrates the problem.
The Palacios family of Edinburg is a political powerhouse. The law partner was a former DA; his uncle is currently the Hidalgo County District Attorney; he has a cousin who is the former DA and current Pharr City Attorney; and a brother who served on the Hidalgo County Commissioners Court for eight years. Finding someone who is well-connected under a federal investigation isn’t a huge surprise. That nothing was ever heard about the matter afterward is no surprise either.
The linked report indicates that the target of this 2024 raid inside the offices of Palacios, Garza, and Thompson was Ricardo “Ricky” Palacios. We will never know what triggered that raid because the story disappeared. The Palacios, Garza, and Thompson firm’s website indicates they are open for business. Ricardo and his partners each have their own page on the website, and none of them appear to have been battling the federal government for the past two years.
The problem is that the Narcos have enough money to corrupt anyone they target. They have no trouble attracting American mules, who are routinely detected at the inland Border Patrol checkpoints. This story about a family from the RGV town of Los Fresnos, caught with 26 pounds of cocaine at the Sarita Border Patrol checkpoint, is typical. That checkpoint is outside Kingsville on US Highway 77, which parallels the coast. The other major highway out of the RGV, Highway 281, has a large Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias. Both checkpoints find plenty of drugs, but the smugglers who get caught seem inexperienced and amateurish.
The only way to stop drug cartels from smuggling drugs and buying influence along the Southern Border is to put the Mexican Border back under the control of the United States Army. I listened to Colonel Dougals Macgregor talk about this on a recent Sentinel podcast about national priorities. He pointed out that the Army controlled the Mexican Border from 1846 to 1948. Border duty has always been one of the best ways to develop junior officers, junior non-commissioned officers, and soldiers.
As long as legal border crossings are controlled by customs and local police, the cartels will be able to ship whatever they want across the border. They can easily pay American officials $60,000 or more in cash each month. If the border is placed under military control, infantry and support units can rotate in every three to six months to conduct squad-level distributed operations. The border is large, and contemporary military units are small, so small-unit leadership will be critical.
The International Boundary and Water Commission lands on the American side of the border were designated a National Defense Area and turned over to the military last July. In theory, the military could use its impressive electronic warfare capabilities to intercept email, text messages, cell phone calls, and two-way radio conversations along the border. We know they have been flying RC-135 airborne surveillance planes and MQ9 Reaper drones for over a year. They could be doing much more, but if the military were responsible for the border again, what would that mean?
Army or Marine Corps infantry battalions can get up to all sorts of mischief if they’re given a free hand. Suppose units on the border are supplemented with a portion of the cash they capture, which they can use to buy items such as drones. During their rotation, the United States Naval Academy Student Unmanned Aerial Flight Team (the country’s best, according to The School of War podcast) works with them to figure out how best to use and modify off-the-shelf aerial and river drones.
Even better, what if brigades started deploying RIAB (radio in a box) along the border, broadcasting the most popular music while criticizing the cartels and the Mexican government? They could give away millions of dollars in confiscated funds through radio call-in segments to boost listener engagement. It worked in the hills of Eastern Afghanistan, and it would work on the border too, but I don’t think the Department of War is there yet.
The point is, we cannot only dry up smuggling profits but also cause a ton of mischief inside Mexico with our military. Mischief has been given a bad rap by our legacy media, which are incapable of recognizing the genius behind military mischief makers. Give some enterprising Lance Corporals their own radio station to blast into Mexico and stand by. The shit they’ll get into will defy imagination, but as long as they’re not shooting people, who cares? Mexico has been up to all sorts of mischief inside the United States for years; it would be gratifying to return the favor.
Unless we get very serious about protecting the Mexican boarder drugs and corruption will continue to plague the country. We have plenty of our own corruption to deal with in Minnesota, Maine, and California. Shutting the border down will be great for Americans and could help the average citizen of Mexico, too, by financially starving the cartels. It’s a win-win, and it is entirely possible that Secretary Hegseth will order the military to the border to close it. That would be an honorable mission, a great leadership incubator, and a way to integrate the latest technology into our fighting forces.
There is nothing that enterprising Lance Corporal’s cannot do. Which is why we have Corporal’s and Sargent’s to make sure that the Lance Corporal’s only do enough…Marines operated in the Caribbean Basin from roughly 1898 to 1937/38, it is old turf and Mexico falls onto the list of “things to do this year” before the first Tuesday in November.
That kind of mischief could be the stuff of legends. Lance corporals just wanna have fun.