The Border: Obama Administration Responds to “Transnational Threats” with New Border Security Program

Border Lines: Obama Administration Responds to “Transnational Threats” with New Border Security Program: "From the beginning the Obama administration had a border problem, and two and a half years later the problem remains. ...

Rather to create a new policy framework for border control – one that would acknowledge that the vast border could never be truly “secured” against all illegal crossings, and one based on efficient control rather than on alarmist national-security and homeland-security threat assessments – the Obama administration has chosen to double down on border security. ...

What is more, the Obama administration has adapted the failed instruments of drug enforcement at home and drug wars abroad to its own border security policy.

The failures of the Obama administration’s approach to border control are clearly evident in one of its new border security operations – the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT), launched along the Arizona border in September 2009 as part of the Southwest Border Initiative.

... ACTT was launched largely in response to the rising outcry of border politicians about alleged increases in spillover violence from Mexico. In keeping with escalated threat assessments made by mostly Republican politicians and border sheriffs in Arizona and Texas, the Obama administration itself raised the border security rhetoric a notch by stating its intention to combat “transnational threats” and “transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) on the U.S. side of the border.

Yet after two years ACTT has little to show in the way of achievements in countering the transnational threats and TCOs that DHS says are endangering homeland security."