As a journalist who has covered both the drug trade and immigration for most of my career, I’ve been struck by the parallels in how the administration has handled these two issues.
The key concept is “deterrence.” For decades, the United States has implemented immigration policies based on the idea that making immigration difficult and dangerous will cause would-be migrants to stay home. Trump has taken this logic further, using aggressive enforcement within the United States to push immigrants to “self-deport.”
In the immigration space, the “deterrence” logic seems to have borne fruit. Migration numbers have plummeted under Trump, slashing the profits of smuggling networks and other criminals who had exploited people trying to reach the United States.
Trump has also applied the “deterrence” logic to the drug trade, claiming that his campaign of deadly missile strikes on alleged drug boats has all but eliminated maritime trafficking.
However, as I wrote in last week’s newsletter, the bombings may have caused traffickers to shift routes, but they certainly haven’t stopped trafficking.
That’s because “deterrence” doesn’t work against the drug trade. Making trafficking harder paradoxically makes it more lucrative. When authorities put more effort toward stopping the drugs, traffickers simply pass the increased costs of defeating those enforcement efforts on to consumers.
It’s rare that you can copy and paste a crime-fighting solution from one domain to another. Keep an eye on our coverage as we continue to follow the consequences of this expanding “deterrence” logic.
