A BI-NATIONAL BLUEPRINT FOR A SMARTER BORDER

Mexico is in the throes of a battle with organized drug cartels that will determine who controls the legitimate institutions of government. The outcome is of vital interest to the United States. As a recent report by a distinguished group of American and Mexican border experts makes clear, Mexico's success depends heavily on how effectively both nations manage our shared border. The report of the joint task force of the Pacific Council on International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations lays out a strategy that will contribute to the defeat of the major drug cartels and at the same time improve the efficiency and security of our border.
Border security is critical to the safety of the citizens of both countries, whether they live near the border or not. It is especially important to breaking the power and influence of the Mexican-based trafficking organizations. Despite vigorous efforts by both governments (including the recent arrests of hundreds of La Familia operatives in the U.S.), huge volumes of illegal drugs still cross from Mexico. In turn, large quantities of weapons and cash generated from illegal drug sales flow south into Mexico, which makes these criminal organizations ever more powerful and able to corrupt government institutions.
While better border law enforcement and interdiction of drugs, weapons and cash will not alone defeat the drug cartels, these steps can and will weaken them and make it easier for the Mexican government to destroy them - just as was done over a decade ago with the destruction of the Medellin and Cali cartels in Colombia. But successful efforts will require closer collaboration between U.S. and Mexican border law enforcement agencies. And this will depend on strengthening law enforcement capacity in the border region, including enhancing the professionalism of enforcement agencies to make them more corruption resistant. It will also require both countries to align the structures of their border agencies to better facilitate coordination.
The report makes several key recommendations. First, Mexico needs a strong, unified border agency capable of addressing security threats, such as cross-border smuggling of weapons and cash. We note that Mexico has begun taking steps in this direction. Mexico should restructure its law enforcement institutions to create a direct counterpart to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), created after 9/11 to unify border enforcement authorities, and to the similarly unified Canadian Border Services Agency. As part of this, Mexico should establish a federal frontier police, dedicated to securing the areas between Mexico's ports of entry - much as the U.S. Border Patrol, a division of CBP, does for the United States.
Organizational changes in Mexico are not enough, however. The United States needs to intensify its efforts to curtail the smuggling of firearms and cash into Mexico. A high percentage of weapons, up to 90 percent, obtained by Mexican drug traffickers come from the U.S., and much of their funding comes from U.S. drug sales. We need to break that flow through more aggressive investigations of laundered outbound cash and U.S. gun sellers, and by reinstituting the ban on assault weapons.
Finally, the U.S. should expand assistance beyond the Merida Initiative, and focus on helping Mexico strengthen its law enforcement capacity at the federal and state levels, reducing its vulnerability to corruption or "plama o plomo" (bribe or bullet) intimidation by the cartels. This expanded Merida Initiative would involve a common strategic approach to achieve the defeat of the drug cartels.
The border is not just about security. One of the best ways to discourage smuggling and other illegitimate commerce is to make the border more efficient for lawful travel and trade. All of the major ports of entry into the U.S. are congested, subjecting travelers and shippers to wait times often as much as two hours. This costs local economies billions of dollars. We can do better. Our Task Force envisions a far faster and more efficient border.
This goal is achievable - while actually improving security - by adding infrastructure, modern detection technologies, and intelligent risk management strategies which enable facilitation of low-risk trade and travel while more effectively identifying high-risk vehicles, cargo and travelers for additional screening.
Both nations should man their border crossings so that staffing shortfalls never contribute to bottlenecks. Both nations should expand existing border gateways and build new ones, expediting the process by working with the private sector and streamlining the cumbersome governmental approval procedures in both countries.
As part of the infrastructure expansion, new dedicated lanes leading to the high volume ports of entry should be built. Only trusted and pre-vetted travelers and shippers would be allowed to use these special lanes, which would lead to primary booths or portals that would function much like EasyPASS toll booths. Rather than hours, trusted and vetted travelers and cargo shipments would be across the border in a few minutes.
It is time to tackle these problems, and improve our shared border. The border needs to become a place where lawful commerce and travel are encouraged, while smuggling and other criminal activities are defeated through coordinated law enforcement. These are bold recommendations to be sure, but they are achievable. And they will have profoundly positive benefits for both the United States and Mexico.
*Mr. Bonner was the first Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, former Administrator of the DEA and the co-chair of the Pacific Council task force on re-thinking the U.S.-Mexico border.