Donald Trump used a visual image for “seal off the border.” He used a wall.
He isn’t going to build a wall. He will not ask Congress for the funding.
He doesn’t need to.
The border can be policed by satellites and a few thousand low-cost drones. The technology is cheap. It is available now.
These are cheap drones that carry no missiles. They only carry cameras. There can be night drones and day drones. They can observe what is going on for miles.
Put up 1,000 drones at all times, day and night. Aim their cameras 10 or 20 miles south of the border. Is there a truck coming north toward a desolate area? Meet it with troops.
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There will be enough troops on the cheap fenced border to head off 80% of the trucks. If 80% of the trucks can’t get their cargo through, the wholesale immigrant business is finished.
Post a thousand troops and drones at the high-crossing areas.
The strategy here is to eliminate the wholesale immigration business. Make the immigrants walk to the border in remote areas. This will drastically reduce the crossings. Move the immigrants from wholesale to retail.
MAKE A DEAL WITH THE COYOTES
Coyotes are the people who take money from desperate would-be illegal immigrants to take them across the border in trucks. They are middlemen.
I propose that Trump makes them two-way middlemen.
A coyote brings a truckload of people to the border. On the American side of the border is a border patrol officer who is assigned to an Army unit. He makes the truck driver an offer: “Take them back. Here is $25,000, cash.”
Yes, I know: pretty soon there will be trucks loaded with fake immigrants. So, run the initial program for long enough to get the word out: “Don’t pay anyone to take you across the border. The gringos have cooked up a deal with the coyotes. The coyotes will take your money. Then they will take the gringos’ money to bring you right back.” Six months will do it.
If traffic starts back up, re-start the program.
Keep the immigrants on the Mexican side of the border. This way, there will be no expensive court hearings on our side of the border. There will be no ACLU attorney coming to the defense of illegal immigrants in the middle of the night in the South Texas desert. The immigrants will not cross the border. Mexico will retain jurisdiction.
Station enough troops and drones on the border to seal it off.
Better yet, arrange for the coyotes to bring the would-be immigrants to established checkpoints. No muss, no fuss.
But, you say, no sensible coyote would do this. It would kill his business. So, stage it. Hire some Mexican Americans in South Texas to do a fake crossing at a fake border. Rent an old truck. Have an actor pay the “driver” a wad of bills. Use a dash cam. Make it look real. Then post the video. Do one of these a week. Use the same two or three trucks.
Have you ever seen Wag the Dog?
Trump can supply the video crew. He is a master of reality TV.
