Border busy? Hell, just wave 'em through.
There are people out there waiting months for visas to come to the US while the ICE bureaucracy—quite rightly—checks their background and security profile. But if you come through the Mexican border at El Paso while it's busy, some genius there is telling people to look in every fifth car and just check drivers' licenses.
No contraband check or anything. No compartments, no density check, just look at the license plate and and the driver's license.
Nice catch by the Times' Sara Carter.
And finally the Mexican Trucks story is getting some play. I saw it on Fox's site and here it is in the Wash Times.
I'm still ambivalent on that because I don't want to sound like some anti-trade wacko and if a truck is safe and licensed and the guy can read and speak English I'm not losing a lot of sleep about what his passport says. What's more, unlike a lot of these US-Mexican programs there is at least some reciprocity and American trucks can drive in Mexico.
My repeated objection to these things is still this: They say these trucks are "inspected", which I presume to be a safety inspection. That's different from a customs inspection for contraband. In fact I've reason to think it's otherwise.
The Times article explains the rationale behind the program like this:
The program was designed to simplify a process that requires Mexican truckers to stop and wait for U.S. trucks to arrive and transfer cargo. The process wastes money, drives up the costs of goods and leaves trucks loaded with cargo idling inside U.S. borders, the Transportation Department says.Well, don't they have to stop anyway while someone inspects their cargo for illegal aliens, cocaine, and radiological weapons? Or is that just another "every fifth car" kind of thing?