EDITORIAL:

Trump’s vitriol toward Mexico is dangerous to U.S.

Mon, Apr 24, 2017 (2 a.m.)

Donald Trump promises to crack down on drug trafficking from Mexico to make the United States safer from cartel violence.

But his policies not only will fail to reduce narcotics traffic, they actually threaten to make it much worse and put Americans deeper in jeopardy.

That warning comes from an expert on the drug trade — Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied cartels extensively.

Felbab-Brown conducted more than eight years of field work in Mexico, including in some of the country’s most violent regions, as background for her forthcoming book “Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops and Corruption.”

During a recent visit to Las Vegas, where she gave a presentation at UNLV, Felbab-Brown outlined how Trump’s policies could blow up in his face and put U.S. citizens at risk. Here are four key examples:

Tough talk on the border wall

The president’s threat to halt so-called remittances — or cash transfers — from the U.S. to Mexico if the Mexican government refuses to pay for Trump’s border wall could easily lead more families south of the border to turn to drug cartels, Felbab-Brown said. Those transfers, often from immigrants living in the U.S. to relatives in Mexico, are a vital source of income for many Mexican families, who already are under pressure to turn to the narcotics trade to scratch out a reasonable living. For many, losing that stream of dollars would tip them over the edge.

NAFTA and the drug trade

Good neighbors who trade freely tend to look out for each other. “Yes, NAFTA can be made better,” Felbab-Brown said. “But the basic concept of free trade and economic integration is good for both countries, including for our security.”

Fighting words

Trump’s public vitriol against Mexico is already causing a backlash, Felbab-Brown said, by helping fuel the rise of leftist, nationalist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been compared to former Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez and has vowed to oppose Trump.

“He is very anti-U.S. and against modernity,” Felbab-Brown said. “He’d like to see the Mexico of the 1920s. And he is the most popular politician now and has the greatest chances of being elected president (in 2018).”

The end of cooperation

In mobilizing U.S. police forces to carry out his deportation policies, Trump was creating an ideal situation for drug cartels, Felbab-Brown said.

“It will sever (immigrant) communities from the police, and you’ll end up with the same situation that exists in Mexico, where people hate the local police instead of cooperating with them,” she said. “To know who the criminal is, you need to know who the community is. And it’s not what any police force can do just from signal intelligence (monitoring cellphone conversations, for instance). So if you want to keep the U.S. safe, get off this very counterproductive notion that local police forces should be directed and demanded to focus and prioritize hunting for undocumented workers.”

Trump famously gets most of his information from TV, which suggests he lacks the focus or ability to read at length. But when Felbab-Brown’s book comes out, somebody should send him a one-sheet on it.

Her message is one Americans desperately need him to hear.

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