If You Build It, They Will Come . . . by Sea
While a continuous border wall or layered border security system along the U.S.-Mexico frontier may seem like a reasonable solution to prevent immigrants from illegally entering the United States, those determined to come will quickly shift to maritime routes. Levels of illegal immigration will increase from traditional source countries, just via maritime routes. This will necessitate a more agile, smarter, and stronger Coast Guard, not a smaller, weaker one that has been suggested in the new administration’s budget guidelines.
Smugglers and illegal immigrants have exploited maritime routes for decades. Most notable are the direct routes used during mass emigrations from Cuba and Haiti. Less familiar routes, even to those in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), include direct maritime means into the United States from the Bahamas, Mexico, and other countries. Hundreds of small boats have smuggled tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into California, Florida, and Texas by loading boats with people who pay $3,000 or more per person for the “guaranteed” transport.
Another smuggling tactic to evade DHS agencies is the chartering or renting of U.S.-registered boats to smuggle immigrants. Maritime smugglers also organize smuggling events, charging the immigrants and stealing small vessels for the transportation. The smugglers or immigrants simply abandon or sink the vessels along the U.S. coast after successful landings.
After the simpler, direct routes to California and Texas are blocked, groups of immigrants will use traditional routes to enter the United States through undefended locations in South Florida and other states. The world has seen such scenarios over the past several decades: the maritime emigrations from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Haiti; human smuggling from China into the United States, often inside shipping containers; and most recently, those in the Mediterranean Sea from the Middle East and North Africa to southern Europe.
What should be done in anticipation of these maneuvers? First, it must be acknowledged that currently DHS neither understands nor attempts to prevent these types of consistently successful smuggling ventures. Practically leaderless, the various agencies under DHS do not anticipate or fully comprehend these events and are reactionary in dealing with these types of security threats. In addition, and in part because of these shortcomings, these agencies are operationally one-dimensional, fail in their intelligence responsibilities, and rarely achieve tactical success.
Second, criminal and terrorist elements will exploit existing gaps in U.S. security among various U.S. agencies and organizations, such as those between U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command. Eventually, the bad guys also will exploit agency borders and geographic and hydrographic advantages. A coherent intelligence strategy actively targeting these threats is critical.
Third, to preempt and to deter these smuggling events—or worse, mass maritime migrations and terrorist infiltrations—the United States needs to develop well-conceived operational plans and strategies to address these perilous gaps in homeland security.
Finally, the United States needs bold, new blood in positions of leadership at the middle and mid-to-upper levels of almost all federal agencies and departments to conduct operations and assist newly appointed cabinet members. Without a requisite full-scale purge of bureaucrats and technocrats, dangerous security threats will persist.
Lieutenant Colonel Trevett is a doctoral student of international development and security studies at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has more than 23 years of experience in the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the Army, including 10 years of maritime interdiction operations.