The following blog post is speculation and may be somewhat of a hot take:
The Tohono O’odham are caught in the middle of a racist administration attempting to scapegoat Mexican Americans as the problem in America. With the information told to us by Richard Saunders that the majority of drugs coming through the remote border areas are marijuana, it is increasingly apparent that the call for a wall and the crackdown on immigration is purely a political stunt. The executive branch and the federal government are not worried about marijuana, and if they were, they would’ve passed laws against states like Colorado or instructed federal agents to arrest those using marijuana in states that have legalized recreational use. The simple fact is that the US executive branch is falsely painting Mexican Americans as criminals and narcotic smugglers, while in reality the majority of those crossing on Tohono O’odham land are simple people, families, or at the most marijuana smugglers. Most narcotics and high-grade drugs are smuggled through ports of entry as told to us by Richard Saunders. Even more interesting, the idea that we should attack the entry of the drugs rather than cohesively looking at the reason there is a demand for dangerous drugs and attempting to ebb the flow at the same time, further points to a disregard for the actual health crisis and leads us to a see an irrational or quick jump to scapegoat a whole nationality. The border issue has been efficiently weaponized by the Trump Administration. The Tohono O’odham are unfortunately caught in the middle, and while they remain vigilant and cooperative with border patrol in the area of drugs and violence, they are hesitant to trust a government that has so often disregarded their culture, way of life, and saw them as a hindrance in the scope of the world.
oof.
I wonder how the Tohono would feel about a higher tech “wall”. this wouldn’t be a physical wall but rather an array of sensors that would allow the border patrol to notice when, where, how many etc. people are crossing the border. They would be completely noninvasive to the natural habitat as they are usually small devices that are buried shallowly. This seems like it would A. Not actually block off the border, B. Be more effective at capturing illegals, C. a cheaper option. It has been proposed but it lacks support as it is not the great, big, beautify wall that was promised.
How would you feel about this?
I agree that we should be looking at the drug crisis in America as one of the primary causes (and therefore primary solutions, if stopped or slowed) of widespread drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Also, I think it’s pretty widely agreed upon that pot should be #legalized. It would be interesting to see, if studied or actually enacted, how taking care of the drug crises in America would impact immigration and smuggling.