For nearly three years Trump has repeatedly said we must crack down on illegal immigration and border crossings because drugs are pouring into the country, but Trump's crackdown has apparently made it easier to smuggle drugs into the country.
Arrests for drug trafficking have dropped to the lowest level since 2001 because resources have been diverted to enforce Trump's "zero tolerance" policy that calls for prosecuting every innocent immigrant who is merely trying to survive.
The decision to prosecute everyone caught entering the USA illegally flooded federal courts with thousands of cases, most of them involving minor immigration violations that resulted in no jail time and a $10 fee. As prosecutors and border agents raced to bring those immigrants to court, the number of people they charged under drug-trafficking laws dropped by 30 percent along the border – and in some places far more steeply than that, a USA TODAY review of court dockets and Justice Department records found.
In June and July, federal prosecutors charged fewer people with drug-trafficking violations than in any month since at least 2001, when the United States began a border security buildup. The numbers rebounded in August but remained lower than the previous summer.
Now, obviously, drug trafficking has not dropped to a 17-year-low so the only plausible explanation here is that trafficking is no longer being policed at a consistent level.
Of course, if we're being real, this was never about stopping the flow of drugs. This is about racism. It's about humans with brown skin color. Average immigrants were never the source of drugs as much as Trump has made them out to be, but enough Americans are willing to buy that rationale to turn racism into official policy.
Most of the people who flee to America are running away from drug traffickers, not helping them.