This week, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a memorandum with 25 other governors creating a “Border Strike Force” aimed at stopping smuggling from Mexico.
“The crisis at our southern border is out of control,” Parson said in a statement. “In the absence of federal leadership, we will do what is required to help solve this growing problem and protect the people of Missouri.”
The group will coordinate drug information, review existing statutes, and target financing of drug-smuggling cartels — without, of course, spending much money. “The agreement does not obligate states to expend funds,” the governor’s news release says.
It will come as no surprise that all 26 governors signing the memorandum are Republicans. It is also no surprise that the agreement is political theater, aimed at placating anti-immigrant activists, when the only immigration problem that Missouri has is that we need more immigrants.
Alleged lax border enforcement “has allowed hundreds of thousands of pounds of illegal drugs to pour into the United States,” Parson says. Let’s examine that claim.
Most illegal drug seizures along the southwest border involve marijuana and methamphetamine, federal figures show. In the last six months, authorities have seized 43,500 pounds of marijuana at the border and 84,500 pounds of meth. They’ve also seized 4,600 pounds of fentanyl, a dangerous opioid.
Marijuana is legal in Missouri for medicinal purposes. Methamphetamine production and use is a decades-old problem in the state, and not merely a reflection of smuggling from Mexico.
Fentanyl is a more complicated issue. The drug is manufactured in Mexico, recent reports found, and smuggled here — but only after ingredients are imported from China and India. Stopping the threat from fentanyl requires an international approach, not just more arrests in Texas or Missouri.
“The difficult truth is that there is no easy solution to the synthetic opioid problem,” concluded a 2022 report, co-authored by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Okahoma.
“The supply of illicit fentanyl cannot be permanently stopped through enforcement alone,” the study found, “but real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs.”
In Missouri, that would mean more support for drug counseling services, better public health care systems, available outpatient space and robust treatment alternatives — precisely the policies Parson and his GOP colleagues have resisted for years.
But the governor isn’t really interested in helping people addicted to drugs. Instead, he prefers to exploit anger at illegal immigrants for political purposes.
“Every state is a border state dealing with the impacts of illegal immigration,” said Idaho Gov. Brad Little, who gives the game away: The agreement is really aimed at increasing anti-immigration fever into places far from Mexico.
Is illegal immigration a problem in Missouri? In 2018, there were an estimated 54,000 undocumented immigrants in the state, less than 1% of the population. Missouri had far fewer undocumented residents than Oklahoma, Colorado — or Kansas.
At the same time, the state’s unemployment rate is 3.6%, and employers are begging for workers. Missouri lawmakers contemplating cuts in unemployment insurance might instead argue for welcoming more immigrants into the state, to take those vacant jobs.
International drug smuggling and human trafficking are serious problems that require serious thought. They must be addressed with a combination of approaches and resources. There is no other way, no matter how many “strike forces” Missouri wants to join.
