Illegal Immigration and the Flow of Drugs

Let me preface this by saying I refuse to adopt the left-right polarizing dichotomy that has consumed my nation. I will never parrot rhetoric. I will only speak on things I know.

A brief note on the link between illegal immigration and drugs, based solely on my objective observations. I was in prison with hundreds of women that were caught trying to smuggle drugs into the United States. Not a single one of them was entering the country “illegally”. Every single person whose story I heard was the same: They had an American-issued Visa (or were American citizens themselves) and were crossing the border in their vehicle through a border checkpoint. Some claim to have gotten caught on the first attempt, others saying they had completed the smuggling journey over 30 times before being caught.

By the time of the 2016 elections, I had been at Dublin for several months. My Spanish had improved immensely and I’d heard dozens, if not hundreds, of cookie-cutter stories of border-checkpoint smuggling. It was in that context that I first heard then-candidate Donald Trump unequivocally linking illegal immigrants to the smuggling of drugs into the US. I looked around the TV room to a sea of brown faces, all with two last names ironed onto their khaki shirts. It didn’t add up. What I was seeing on television didn’t fit with my first-hand experience.

A wall will not stop the flow of drugs. Drugs are coming in at legal border checkpoints, hidden in airbags and gas tanks and spare tires. Drugs are coming in through an otherwise legal means of entry, and they are coming in because there is such voracious demand for them here. The link between illegal immigration and illegal drugs does not exist—it is a political fabrication.