Facts Contradict That Border Is More Secure Than Ever

In the same week that the nation’s Homeland Security secretary assured Congress the southern border is more secure than ever, an Arizona sheriff deputy got shot by Mexican drug smugglers and an illegal immigrant drop house got busted in separate areas.

Is it possible that Janet Napolitano misspoke at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when she confidently asserted that the U.S.-Mexico border is “as secure now as it’s ever been?” She is after all, the Obama Administration official charged with protecting the country’s safety and securing its borders.

Her words certainly lost credibility because they were delivered within days of two separate incidents that contradict her seemingly delusional assessment of the southern border. Additionally, there has been solid documentation—from the media as well as the government—of a drastic increase in violence by drug and human smugglers that routinely make their way north.

Just a few weeks ago a federal report revealed that Mexican drug cartels continue to be the nation’s largest supplier of illicit narcotics and that violent Mexican gangs have expanded into every region of the country, including idyllic rural areas. Thousands of metric tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine were smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico in the last year and tens of billions of dollars in drug proceeds flowed back south, according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

Weeks before that the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert to warn U.S. law enforcement officers and their families that a deadly Mexican gang is actively plotting to kill them in retaliation for a sweep targeting its thugs. The alert warns cops to wear body armor and vary routes to avoid being tracked by the violent gang that has spread throughout the U.S.

Last week alone, local authorities in west Phoenix discovered about a dozen illegal immigrants and their smugglers holed up on a drop house. A few days later Mexican drug smugglers ambushed a Pinal county sheriff’s deputy in a remote area of south Phoenix and shot him in the stomach. The rugged desert area is well known as a high traffic and drug smuggling corridor.

These incidents seem to indicate that the Secretary of Homeland Security is lying to Americans about securing the porous and increasingly dangerous southern border.