Securing the Texas Border

Bill Steigerwald:

Waves of illegal immigrants are the least of Steve McCraw’s problems. Texas has the longest border with Mexico, and McCraw, the state’s director of homeland security, has the difficult job of trying to keep some very nasty criminals and potential terrorists from crossing it.

Appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, McCraw, 52, is a former FBI intelligence expert who oversees state and local police resources that have been deployed to make Texas safer and help the U.S. Border Patrol. I talked to him last week by telephone from his offices in Austin.

What is it you are supposed to be doing?

The focus, as the governor has laid out, is deterrence and prevention. This started in 2005 as part of a five-year strategic plan that identified that our most significant threat, the porous 1,240-mile Texas-Mexico border, didn’t constitute just a national security threat but was a public safety threat as well. There has been an escalation over the years.

About a decade ago, the drug-trafficking organizations that pretty much dominated the cocaine and marijuana business have really evolved into extremely powerful and ruthless organized crime groups. The fact is, they control the northern Mexico border. This affects places like Pittsburgh. In fact, the governor has argued that what’s on the Texas border and the southwest border affects the rest of the nation. Mexican drug-traffic organizations now dominate the lucrative U.S. drug market, also the human smuggling market, which is the national security side of things.

So you’re not concerned with illegal immigration?

First of all, what we are not dealing with is immigration policy. The position of the governor is that until we secure the border, immigration policy reforms, though very well-intentioned, will not be effective in the long run or even the short run. It’s been said that, well, if you are able to address the demand for immigrant labor, that you’ve in fact increased the security of the border. Well, you really haven’t. If you decrease the demand for labor, criminals and terrorists will still come through an insecure border. They’re not motivated by jobs. What the governor wants to focus on are terrorists and criminals. But in order to do that you really have to focus on securing the border between the ports of entry. Until you do so, there is no homeland security.

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There is much more. His point about the narco thugs controlling northern Mexico I think is pretty accurate, if you just take a look at Nuevo Laredo as an example.