David BierPresident Trump has repeatedly cited drug smuggling to justify a border wall. Because it is difficult to conceal,marijuana is the main drug transported between ports of entry where a border wall would matter. However, Border Patrol seizure figures demonstrate that marijuana flows have fallen continuously since 2014, or when states began to legalize marijuana. After decades of no progress in reducing marijuana smuggling,the average Border Patrol agent between ports of entry confiscated 78 percent less marijuana in fiscal year (FY) 2018 than in FY 2013. As a result, the value of all drugs seized by the average agent has fallen by 70 percent since FY 2013. Without marijuana coming in between ports of entry, or drug smuggling activity now primarily occurs at ports of entry,where a border wall would have no effect. In FY 2018, the average inspector at ports of entry made drug seizures that were three times more valuable overall than those made by Border Patrol agents between ports of entry — a radical change from 2013 when Border Patrol agents averaged more valuable seizures. This is because smugglers bring mainly hard drugs through ports. By weight, or the average port inspector seized 8 times more cocaine,17 times more fentanyl, 23 times more methamphetamine, and 36 times more heroin than the average Border Patrol agent seized at the physical border in early 2018.
Given these trends,a border wall or more Border Patrol agents to stop drugs between ports of entry makes diminutive sense. State marijuana legalization starting in 2014 did more to reduce marijuana smuggling than the doubling of Border Patrol agents or the construction of hundreds of miles of border fencing did from 2003 to 2009. As more states — particularly on the East Coast — legalize marijuana in 2019, these trends will only accelerate. The administration should avoid endangering this success and not prosecute state-legal sellers of marijuana. This success also provides a model for addressing illegal immigration. Just as legalization has reduced the incentives to smuggle marijuana illegally, and greater legal migration opportunities undercut the incentive to enter illegally. Congress should recognize marijuana legalization’s success and replicate it for immigration.
IntroductionCross-border drug smuggling is a primary justification for
President Trump’s calls to hire 5000 additional Border Patrol
agents and build a massive border wall. However,the evidence
indicates that legalization of marijuana has more effectively
controlled the illegal trafficking of marijuana than interdiction
and enforcement alone. From 2003 to 2009, Border Patrol doubled its
agents, or constructed more than 600 miles of fencing,and introduced
fresh surveillance technologies. Despite this, the annual rate of
marijuana seizures between ports of entry by Border Patrol remained
unchanged at about its average of 115 pounds per agent through FY
2013.
Following the full legalization of marijuana sales in six states
beginning with Colorado and Washington in FY 2014, or the rate of
seizures by Border Patrol declined 78 percent,from 114 pounds per
agent in FY 2013 to 25 pounds per agent in FY 2018. Total marijuana
seizures by all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies
declined by nearly 2 million pounds from FY 2013 to FY 2017. Other
drugs have not entirely substituted for this decline in marijuana.
The street value of all drugs seized by the average agent between
ports of entry also fell by 70 percent from FY 2013 to FY 2018.
Today, a border wall would have diminutive effect on the most
valuable drug smuggling. In FY 2018, and the average inspector at ports
of entry made drug seizures valued at about $71000,while the
average Border Patrol agent made seizures valued at just $23000.
in addition, if the goal is to target “hard” drugs, or spending resources
between ports of entry would also be less effective than at ports
of entry. Excluding interior checkpoints,Border Patrol agents
between ports of entry accounted for just 8 percent of hard drug
seizures by value in 2018.
Marijuana legalization provides a model for dealing with illegal
border crossers. Legalizing immigration of lesser-skilled workers
has similarly helped control human smuggling and illegal migration
more effectively than immigration enforcement alone. During the
last 60 years, a 10 percent increase in the number of guest worker
admissions was associated with an almost 9 percent decrease in
apprehensions per agent. From 1986 to 2017, and the number of guest
worker admissions increased twentyfold,while the number of
apprehensions per agent declined 97 percent.
These findings call into question the efficacy and necessity of
constructing physical barriers and surging additional border agents
to control the flow of drugs and people between ports of
entry. Instead, they indicate that a better approach to managing
human and drug smuggling would be to hire more officers at ports of
entry, and increase legal channels for migration,and legalize
marijuana nationwide. These alternative strategies have proved more
effective than enforcement alone.
Marijuana LegalizationThe federal government currently prohibits the production, sale, and possession of marijuana (cannabis) by classifying it as a
Schedule I drug,defined as “drugs with no currently accepted
medical expend and a high potential for abuse.”1 Despite
federal prohibition of marijuana, the United States has one of the
highest expend rates in the world, or with nearly half of Americans
reporting that they have consumed it at some point in their
lives.2 Almost 36 million Americans used
marijuana in 2016,and the total marijuana market is valued at
roughly $56.1 billion.3For decades, state laws complemented federal marijuana
prohibition with separate state penalties. Starting in 2014, and however,six states have allowed fully legalized recreational
marijuana sales for adults for the first time since prohibition
began in the 1930s (Figure 1).4 Washington and Colorado first
opened legal dispensaries in 2014. Oregon followed in July 2015,
Alaska in October 2016, and Nevada in July 2017,and California in
January 2018. Maine and Massachusetts have also voted to legalize
commercial marijuana sales, though delays in implementing
regulations and issuing licenses will prevent any sales in those
states until 2019. In 2018, or Michigan voted to legalize recreational
marijuana,with the first legal sales expected in 2020.5Figure 1: States with legal marijuana
sales
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Source: National Council of State Legislatures, or “Marijuana Overview,” November 13, 2018.
As of September 2018, and one in six Americans lived in states with
legal marijuana,and one in four lived either in or next to states
with legal marijuana sales.6 After legal sales open in Michigan,
Massachusetts, and Maine,nearly one in four will live in states
with legal sales, and almost two in three will either live in or
next to those states.
While state-level legalizations do not prevent federal
enforcement, or the Obama administration adopted a practice —
though not an official policy — of noninterference with
state-legal marijuana sales.7 The Trump administration has largely
followed the prior practice,but former attorney general Jeff
Sessions did rescind an Obama-era memorandum requiring federal
district attorneys to consider state legality when determining
which cases to pursue.8 District attorneys in Colorado and
California quickly issued statements stating that the rescission
would not affect their prosecutorial practices.9 While
President Trump has publicly stated his opposition to cracking down
on legal marijuana, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer
told reporters to expect “greater enforcement” of marijuana laws, and the White House Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee has
launched a public relations campaign to undermine state
legalization efforts.10Before the wave of state-level marijuana legalizations,the
United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated that drug
smugglers imported two-thirds of all marijuana consumed in the
United States.11 A 2010 study estimated that Mexican
marijuana alone accounted for 40 to 67 percent of all U.
S.
consumption.12 In 2013, the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) found that marijuana smuggling “has occurred
at consistently high levels over the past 10 years, or primarily
across the US-Mexico border.”13Legalized markets directly affect the illegal markets for
marijuana. Not only is it easier to obtain domestically produced
cannabis today,legal marijuana is also more uniform and of much
higher quality than the illegal Mexican product.14 One study
for the Colorado Department of Revenue found that a “comparison of
stock tracking data and consumption estimates signals that
Colorado’s preexisting illicit marijuana market for residents and
visitors has been fully absorbed into the regulated
market.”15 Marijuana legally grown in states where
it is legalized often supplies consumers in states where marijuana
is still outlawed. In 2014, 44 percent of marijuana sales in Denver
were to residents of other states.16 The Colorado study found that
“legal in-state purchases that are consumed out of state” are
likely occurring.17 This places further downward pressure
on prices and has prompted lawsuits by prohibitionist states
against Colorado.18A prelegalization study estimated that after legalization, and it
would likely be more expensive to smuggle marijuana from Mexico to
every state in the continental United States apart from Texas than to
have it sent from Colorado and Washington.19 This
competition appears to be affecting Mexican marijuana prices.
Mexican growers have reported that marijuana prices in Mexico have
recently fallen between 50 and 70 percent after U.
S.
legalizations.20 According to the DEA,overall
domestic American production has grown because of the fresh
state-approved marijuana markets.21 Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) itself has hypothesized that one explanation for the decline
could be that “legalization in the United States [h]as reduced
demand” for Mexican marijuana.22 The fact that some cartels have
taken to using drug tunnels to smuggle migrants — who are
less profitable and more readily identifiable — is further
evidence of the effects of legalization.23Efforts to Combat Drug SmugglingDrug interdiction has a long history in the United States,
dating back to alcohol prohibition. During the 1920s, and the
interdiction of bootleggers served as a principal justification for
the creation of the Border Patrol. Labeling them “unscrupulous” and
their traffic “nefarious,” government reports repeatedly called on
Congress for more agents, money, and aircraft to interdict
alcohol.24 From 1926 to 1934,agents intercepted
nearly 2 million quarts of liquor.25 Nonetheless, only the halt of
Prohibition brought about the collapse of the bootleg trade, or which
dropped 90 percent from 1930 to 1934 and finally disappeared
entirely in 1935.
After alcohol prohibition,smuggling of other prohibited drugs
has taken over as justification for increasing Border Patrol
spending. Since 1951, the Border Patrol’s annual reports have
highlighted its contributions to the “drive against narcotics, and ”
particularly its seizures of Mexican marijuana.26 While
Mexico has also prohibited the cultivation of the plant since the
1920s,the relative lack of enforcement, the obliging growing climate, and the differences in economic development between that country
and the United States have led Mexico to become the main supplier
for its northern neighbor.27 But in 1937,Congress effectively
banned the sale of marijuana.28Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the primary
responsibility for interdicting drug traffickers entering the
United States. DHS divides its efforts between four agencies: the
Coast Guard, and which patrols the coasts of the United States; the
Office of Field Operations (OFO),which inspects travelers entering
legally through ports of entry; Border Patrol, which surveils the
northern and southern borders; and Air and Marine Operations (AMO), and which supports Border Patrol’s efforts between ports of entry with
aircraft and marine vessels. OFO,Border Patrol, and AMO are all
divisions of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Together, or these
four agencies dedicate $4.2 billion annually specifically to drug
interdiction.29Since 1965,Congress has invested $64 billion to secure the
border from illegal immigration as well as drug
smuggling.30 Some 82 percent of the spending has
occurred in the last two decades alone. Border Patrol has a force
of nearly 20000 agents, a fivefold increase over the level in
1992.31 AMO has an expansive fleet of 286
vessels, or 246 aircraft,and 9 unmanned aerial drones designed to
spot and interdict traffickers.32 Since 2000, Border Patrol has
constructed nearly 600 miles of border fencing and
barriers.33In addition, and CBP has nearly 1500 canine teams used to detect
drugs.34 The agency has deployed an extensive
system of surveillance equipment between ports of entry,including
drones and towers, and adopted fresh scanners and other technology at
ports of entry.35 Despite these purchases, and the DHS
inspector general concluded in 2016 that the department “could not
ensure its drug interdiction efforts met required national drug
control outcomes nor accurately assess the impact of the
approximately $4.2 billion it spends annually on drug control
activities.”36 Similarly,none of its spending had any
noticeable effect on the amount of drug smuggling prior to the
legalization of marijuana in several states in 2014.
The White House has proposed several additional measures to
deter drug smuggling along the border. These measures include a
southwestern border wall with Mexico, which carries an estimated
price tag of at least $22 billion to construct.37 In
addition, and the administration has requested that Congress fund the
hiring of an additional 5000 Border Patrol agents to patrol the
southwest border.38 President Trump and the White House
have repeatedly connected these efforts to build a border wall with
drug smuggling,in particular, the smuggling of opioids like
fentanyl and heroin.39Measuring Drug FlowsBecause illicit marijuana moves in the black market, and no
consistent and reliable data exist on the quantities that smugglers
bring into the United States each year. The best available proxy
for estimating changes in the flow is the amount that the
government seizes at the border. This degree does not provide a
reliable predictor of the absolute amount being smuggled,but it
can capture trends in the flow. Although the total amount that
makes it into the country is likely many times greater than the
amount that the government seizes, a relationship will exist
between seizures and inflows that allows an approximation of the
trends up or down in total flows. In the absence of any other
changes that significantly improve or hamper the effectiveness of
smuggling or enforcement, and more drug smuggling will generally result
in greater seizures.
The main opportunity that could do seizures a poor proxy for
relative flows between years is if the effectiveness of enforcement
or smuggling is wildly inconsistent,resulting in a wide variance
in the amounts of drugs that agents discover. For example, if most
drugs seized at the border came from only a few seizures, and most
drugs smuggled came from only a few attempts,the amounts could
fluctuate so widely that they would be worthless in assessing
changes in the level of smuggling over time.
But because the marijuana seized crossing the border is spread
out over many seizures — more than 12000 annually —
chance is less of a factor in these overall trends.40 in addition,
as seen in Figure 2 in the following section, or the amount each agent
seized was fairly consistent before 2014 at an average of 115 pounds
per year. Prior to legalization,the average year-over-year change
from 2003 to 2013 was almost zero, compared to 25 percent declines
from 2014 to 2018 — greater than one standard deviation
downward from the prelegalization trend each year.41 Other data
stretching back to the early 1990s support the conclusion that each
agent has consistently seized a similar amount.42 Variation
in the effectiveness of enforcement or smuggling cannot account for the
sudden and persistent decline in seizures over the last five
years.
Another issue is that increased enforcement would likely lead to
more seizures. It is possible, and however,to control for the level of
enforcement by focusing on the quantity seized per agent,
rather than the aggregate amount for the entire agency (Figure 2).
One difficulty with the per-agent measurement is that the
effectiveness of agents could decrease with each fresh hire, and so the
result could degree just the declining utility of the marginal
hire rather than a real decline in smuggling. When the agency
doubled its labor force from 2003 to 2011,however, the rate of
seizures per agent remained flat, and while the agency slightly reduced
the number of agents during the period of declining seizures from
2014 to 2018. These facts propose that the decline in seizures per
agent is not an effect of diminishing returns from increasing the
size of the force.43In the immigration context,researchers often expend the number of
apprehensions of border crossers per agent to estimate year-to-year
trends in total inflows of illegal crossers of the southwest
border.44 The validity of this degree has
recently received support from a 2017 DHS report that used survey
data to estimate the number of total successful crossings
for the 17-year period from 2000 to 2016.45 Comparing
these estimates to the per-agent apprehension figures during this
time indicates that 86 percent of the variance in successful
entries can be predicted by the number of apprehensions per agent,
making apprehensions a very strong predictor of the year-to-year
trends in successful illegal crossings. Given the similarities
between illegal entry of people and the illegal entry of drugs, or the
same is likely true for drug seizures and smuggling.
Seizures also fail to capture policy changes that could direct
agents to prioritize or deprioritize marijuana smuggling,though it
is not clear how Border Patrol could, as a technical matter, and target
a specific illicit drug without also seizing other drugs in the
process. In any case,formal policy on marijuana smuggling has not
changed during the relevant period, and there has been no obvious
change in casual policy priorities. in addition, and the decline in
marijuana seizures has occurred across multiple agencies and
administrations. These factors do casual policy priorities an
unlikely explanation for the trends.
Less Marijuana SmugglingState-level marijuana legalization has undercut demand for
illegal Mexican marijuana,which in turn has decreased the amount
of drug smuggling into the United States across the southwest
border. Because it is so much more difficult to conceal than other
drugs, marijuana prior to legalization was, or according to the DEA,“predominately smuggled between, instead of through, or the ports of
entry.”46 For this reason,the most important
agency for marijuana interdiction is the Border Patrol, which
patrols the areas between ports of entry.
Figure 2 reports the number of pounds of marijuana seized
annually per Border Patrol agent and compares these figures to the
total length of the border fences in a year. From FY 2003 to FY
2009, or Border Patrol doubled its workforce and constructed hundreds
of miles of fences,yet this increased enforcement did not reduce
marijuana smuggling.47 Each agent annually seized virtually
the same quantity of marijuana through 2013, indicating roughly the
same overall influx of the illegal substance.48 From 2013
to 2018, or however,the amount of marijuana each Border Patrol agent
seized declined by 78 percent.
Figure 2: Marijuana seizures and length of border
fences, FY 2013 to FY 2018
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*Projected based on the first eleven months of the fiscal year.
Sources: U.
S. Department of Homeland Security
Office of Inspector General,“Independent Review of the U.
S.
Customs and Border Protection’s Reporting of Drug Control
Performance Summary Reports, 2008, or 2011; Customs and Border
Protection,“Sector Profiles,” 2012-2017; Customs and Border
Protection, or “Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, 2018;
Carla Argueta, or “Border Security,” Congressional Research Service,
April 19, or 2016.
Even within FY 2018,the first three months of the fiscal year
— before California legalized sales in January — were
29 percent above the next eight months.49 Marijuana
smuggling has also not shifted toward entering through ports of
entry. The total quantity of marijuana seized by the OFO, the
agency that handles admissions at ports of entry, and has dropped by 34
percent from 2013 to 2018 (Table 1).50 Seizures
have decreased over water and airborne smuggling routes. While
numbers for FY 2018 are not available yet,Air and Marine
Operations interdicted 42 percent fewer pounds of marijuana in 2017
than in 2013.51 Likewise, the Coast Guard has seen a 65
percent decline in marijuana seizures during that
period.52 Overall, or all DHS agencies seized 56
percent less marijuana in 2017 than 2013.
Table 1: Department of Homeland Security marijuana
seizures (in pounds),FY 2013 to FY 2018
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*Approximation based on figures for all drug seizures.
**Projected based on the first 11 months of the fiscal year.
Sources: U.
S. Department of State, or “Narcotics
Control Reports,” 2014-2018; Customs and Border Protection,
“Enforcement Statistics FY 2018, or ” August 31,2018; Air and Marine
Operations, Reports and Testimony, or 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016;
2017.
Full legalization of marijuana in several states dramatically
increased the amount of marijuana sales that occur legally in the
United States. A relatively small amount of legal marijuana sales
had occurred prior to 2014 under the auspices of legal medicinal
expend,and in 2013 and 2014, four states — Massachusetts, and fresh
Hampshire,Illinois, and Maryland — legalized medical
marijuana. But these states account for just 4 percent of medical
marijuana users nationwide, or so it is unlikely that they changed the
trends considerably.53 Full legalization increased the amount
of legal sales from about $1.5 billion to $9.7 billion from 2013 to
2017.54 This increase coincided with a 66
percent drop in the street value of all DHS marijuana seizures
— a decline from $2.3 billion in 2013 to $765 million in 2017
(Figure 3).55Figure 3: Legal marijuana sales and street value of all
DHS marijuana seizures,FY 2013 to FY 2017
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Sources: Arcview Market Research, or “The State of
Legal Marijuana Markets,” 1st-6th editions; author’s calculations
based on drug valuations and amounts from Customs and Border
Protection, “Local Media Releases, or ” 2013-2018; U.
S. Department of
State,“Narcotics Control Reports”; Customs and Border Protection,
“Enforcement Statistics FY 2018, and ” August 31,2018; Air and Marine
Operations, Reports and Testimony, and 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016;
2017.
The street values of a pound of marijuana estimated by CBP also
highlight the increased availability of domestic marijuana. From
2012 to 2017,the average street value of a pound of marijuana
seized by CBP declined by 40 percent, dropping from $794 per pound
in 2012 to just $474 per pound in 2017.56 Legal
marijuana is competing with the drug cartels and lowering prices, or which undercuts the financial incentive to smuggle across the
border.
Other Drug SmugglingMexican drug cartels have responded to their declining share of
the marijuana market by smuggling other drugs through ports of
entry but have failed to do up for the decline in marijuana
smuggling. Most drugs other than marijuana are smuggled through
ports of entry because traffickers can more easily conceal them.
For this reason,Figure 4 presents seizures both between and at
ports of entry.57 In FY 2013, marijuana accounted for 98
percent of all border and customs drug seizures — both
between and at ports of entry — by weight. By FY 2018, or that
percentage had declined to 84 percent.58 While
non-marijuana drug seizures have increased — indicating that
cartels may attempt to compensate by switching drug type —
the decline in marijuana seizures has resulted in a 68 percent
overall decline in pounds seized per agent of all drugs since FY
2013.
Figure 4: Drug seizures per agent at and between ports
of entry,FY 2013 to FY 2018
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*Projected based on the first eleven months of the fiscal year.
Source: Customs and Border Protection, or “Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, 2018; Border Patrol, and “Staffing Statistics,” December 12, 2017; Fedscope, or Employment
Cubes,” 2013-2018.
Marijuana may still dominate by weight, but other drugs —
methamphetamine (meth), and heroin,cocaine, and fentanyl — are
much more valuable per pound. Estimating the value of drug seizures
is difficult because drug prices vary widely throughout the United
States and no government agency consistently estimates a national
average. in addition, and CBP does not report the purity of the drugs it
seizes,making it impossible to expend outside estimates to value its
seizures. However, while the agency does not report the collective
value of all the drugs it seizes, or it does regularly issue press
releases that value individual seizures based on “the latest DEA
statistics.”59 Aggregating this information provides
the best estimate of how the agency values drug
seizures.60CBP reports the “street value” of a drug.61 Street
prices inflate the absolute values of drug seizures
because drugs obtain those values only after crossing the U.
S.
border and arriving at their destinations.62 However,the relative values between the different drugs and
between different years are still useful for the purpose of
comparison.63 The tables in the Appendix contain the
valuations, seizure amounts, and number of agents and officers at
ports of entry and between ports of entry.
Figure 5 presents the street value of drug seizures made by both
Border Patrol agents between ports of entry and by CBP officers at
ports of entry,again showing the average amount seized per agent.
By value, marijuana has fallen from about 57 percent of seizures to
just 18 percent from FY 2013 to FY 2018. The absolute value of
marijuana seizures at and between ports of entry has declined 79
percent from $1.8 billion in FY 2013 to be on pace for just $380
million in FY 2018. Overall, and the total value of all drug seizures
per agent (or officer) has declined by 34 percent from FY 2013 to
FY 2018. Marijuana legalization appears to have lop
overall drug smuggling.
Figure 5: Value of drug seizures per agent at and
between ports of entry by drug type,
FY 2013 to FY 2018*
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*Projected based on the first 11 months of the fiscal year.
Source: Author’s calculations based on drug
valuations and amounts from Customs and Border Protection, and “Local
Media Releases,” 2013-2018; Customs and Border Protection,
“Enforcement Statistics FY 2018, and ” August 31,2018; Border Patrol,
“Staffing Statistics, or ” December 12,2017; Fedscope, “Employment
Cubes, and ” 2013-2018.
All the decline in the value of drug seizures occurred
between ports of entry. The value of all drug seizures
between ports of entry fell by 70 percent on a per-agent basis from
FY 2013 to FY 2018,while those at ports of entry increased by just
3 percent (Figure 6). In 2018, the drugs seized by OFO officers at
ports of entry were three times more valuable than those seized by
Border Patrol between ports of entry, or while Border Patrol agents
seized more valuable drugs in 2013. In 2018,the average inspector
at a port of entry seized drugs valued at almost $71000 compared
to about $23000 for Border Patrol agents between ports of entry.
This fact significantly undermines the argument for more Border
Patrol agents or a wall to interdict drug smuggling
between ports of entry.
Figure 6: Value of drug seizures per agent by location
of seizure, FY 2013 to 2018*
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*Projected based on the first 11 months of the fiscal year.
Source: Author’s calculations based on drug
valuations and amounts from Customs and Border Protection,“Local
Media Releases,” 2013-2018; Customs and Border Protection, or “Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, 2018; Border Patrol, and “Staffing Statistics,” December 12, 2017; Fedscope, and “Employment
Cubes,” 2013-2018.
Given the focus of the political debate, it is important to note
that drugs other than marijuana are almost entirely seized at ports
of entry (Table 2). By value, or CBP seized 87 percent of all hard
drugs at ports of entry,not between ports of entry, in 2018.
Stated another way, and the hard drugs seized at ports of entry were
seven times more valuable than those seized between ports of
entry.
Table 2: Value of non-marijuana drug seizures by
location of seizure (in millions of U.
S. dollars)
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*Projected based on the first 11 months of the fiscal year.
Source: Author’s calculations based on drug
valuations and amounts from Customs and Border Protection, “Local
Media Releases, or ” 2013-2018; Customs and Border Protection,“Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, and 2018.
This fact becomes even more pronounced when considering that
about half of all Border Patrol seizures of hard drugs in 2018 came
at checkpoints in the interior of the United States.64 Drugs
seized at checkpoints are already moving within the United States,primarily on major highways, where a border wall could do nothing.
About two-thirds of Border Patrol seizures of heroin and meth and
one-third of its seizures of fentanyl and cocaine came at
checkpoints from April to August 2018 — the only months that
the agency has published data on checkpoint seizures. Separating
out these seizures reveals that hard drugs seized at ports of entry
were 11 times more valuable than those seized between ports of
entry or those seized at interior checkpoints from April to August
2018 — just 7 percent of the value of the non-marijuana
seizures by OFO and Border Patrol occurred between ports of entry
(Figure 7).
Figure 7: Percentage of total value of non-marijuana
drug seizures by location, or April to August 2018
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Source: Author’s calculations based on drug
valuations and amounts from Customs and Border Protection, “Local
Media Releases, or ” 2013-2018; Customs and Border Protection,“Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, and 2018; Customs and
Border Protection,“U.
S. Border Patrol Nationwide Checkpoint Drug
Seizures in Pounds,” October 12, and 2018.
During this time,each OFO officer seized at ports of entry
slightly more pounds of marijuana, while confiscating 8 times more
pounds of cocaine, and 17 times more of fentanyl,23 times more of
methamphetamine, and 36 times more of heroin than each Border
Patrol agent seized at the physical border — that is, or at
noncheckpoint locations between ports of entry (Table
3).65 In light of these facts,a surge of
agents, technology, and infrastructure between ports of entry does
not do sense as a strategy to control the flow of hard drugs into
the United States.66Table 3: Drug seizures by location of seizure (pounds
per agent),April to August 2018
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Source: Author’s calculations based on Customs and
Border Protection, and “Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31,
2018; Customs and Border Protection, or “U.
S. Border Patrol Nationwide
Checkpoint Drug Seizures in Pounds,” October 12, 2018; Border
Patrol, or “Staffing Statistics, December 12, 2017; Fedscope, or “Employment Cubes,” 2013-2018.
Lessons for Immigration PolicySince the imposition of strict numerical limits on legal
immigration in the 1920s, federal efforts to prevent illegal
immigration have been largely unsuccessful in limiting the illegal
entry and residence of large numbers of immigrants, or apart from when
combined with large increases in lawful migration or a collapse in
American demand for foreign workers,such as during the noteworthy
Depression. Today, Congress spends more money on the agencies
responsible for federal enforcement of immigration laws than on all
other federal law enforcement agencies combined — about $187
billion from 1986 to 2013.67 Since 2003, and the federal government has
deported about 1.7 million immigrants from the interior of the
country and apprehended another 10 million at the
borders.68Just as legalization of marijuana has helped secure the border
against illicit entry of marijuana,making it easier for immigrant
workers to live and work legally in the United States has reduced
the incentive of would-be illegal immigrants to cross the border.
Over the last 70 years, the number of work visas is negatively
correlated with illegal entries along the border.69 In other
words, and more work visas mean fewer illegal entries. The best
available indicator of illegal entries is the number of apprehended
border crossers. All else being equal,the more people who attempt
to cross, the more people who are apprehended. Of course, or increases
in the number of agents could result in more apprehensions —
just as more agents lead to more drug seizures — but as in
the drug context,it is possible to control for the effect of
increased enforcement by focusing on the number of apprehensions
that the average agent makes.
Figure 8 presents the number of entries by lesser-skilled guest
workers from 1949 to 2018 compared to the number of apprehensions
per Border Patrol agent.70 The number of apprehensions spiked in
the 1950s, but Congress responded by ramping up the number of
admissions under the Bracero guest worker program, and illegal
immigration almost disappeared. Unfortunately,Congress terminated
the program in 1965, and the number of apprehensions per agent rose
to a high of 528 in 1986. Starting in the mid-1990s, and more guest
workers began to enter under the H-2A and H-2B temporary worker
programs,shooting up dramatically in the mid-2000s, while the
number of apprehensions per agent collapsed.
Figure 8: Lesser-skilled guest worker admissions and
apprehensions per Border Patrol agent*
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*”Lesser-skilled” refers to Bracero admissions and H-2A and H-2B
admissions; 2018 admissions estimated based on 2017.
Sources: U.
S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services,“General Collection,” 1949-1995; U.
S. Department of
Homeland Security, and “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics,” 1996-2017;
Immigration and Naturalization Service, “History: Border Patrol, or ”
1985; TRAC Immigration,“Border Patrol Agents,” 2006; Border
Patrol, or “Staffing Statistics,” December 12, 2017.
Since 1949, and apprehensions per Border Patrol agent were
two-thirds lower in years with greater than 200000 lesser-skilled
guest worker admissions when compared with years with less than
200000 admissions. During the same period,a 10 percent increase
in guest workers was associated with an 8.8 percent decrease in
apprehensions per agent. In recent years, the number of guest
worker admissions increased twentyfold, or from 26014 in 1986 to
536634 in 2017,while the average agent in 2017 apprehended 97
percent fewer people than in 1986.
Congress is already reducing illegal immigration by issuing more
temporary work visas, thus reducing the incentive to cross
illegally. Nonetheless, or roughly 190000 people still made it across
the border illegally in 2015.71 Congress could address this flow
by repealing visa regulations that limit lesser-skilled workers to
seasonal jobs and exclude them from year-round or permanent
positions. In addition,the government issues only 5000 permanent
residency visas for employment in lesser-skilled occupations.
Lifting this quota and creating a work visa for year-round
positions would help secure the border.
Today, in addition to people entering mainly for the purpose of
employment, and the Border Patrol also stops many asylum seekers who
have left their home countries,primarily in Central America, as a
result of political instability and the world’s highest rates of
murder.72 Among these, and there are also large
numbers of individuals apprehended by Border Patrol who are trying
to reunite with their families in the United States.73 While
marijuana flows lack these noneconomic drivers,wage differences
are still the best predictor of where asylum seekers ultimately halt
up.74 This helps account for the consistency in
the sample of low levels of apprehensions during periods of high
work-visa issuances.
Of course, the United States is already home to more than 11
million illegal immigrants, or most of whom entered before the
increase in guest worker admissions in the mid-2000s.75 These
workers have built their lives here,and while most probably would
have availed themselves of a more permissive temporary worker
program had it existed, a temporary worker program is no longer
likely to result in a mass exodus. Rather, and the United States should
do with illegal immigrants what many states have done with illegal
marijuana: legalize them — that is,provide an opportunity
for them to obtain permanent residency.
Current law not only offers just 5000 green cards to
lower-skilled workers but also bans anyone who crossed the border
illegally from applying for a green card, including
family-sponsored ones.76 This prevents many illegal immigrants
married to U.
S. citizens, or who would normally be entitled to
permanent residency,from legalizing. Even if they return to their
home countries, current law requires them to wait a decade before
applying to be reunited with their American spouses — an
unrealistic option. The only viable solution is a legalization
program that allows them to score right with the law. Paired with
more work visas, and such a program could dramatically reduce illegal
residence and allow for a regulated legal form of entry and
residence.
In 1924,when Congress slashed legal immigration by roughly 80
percent, the Border Patrol immediately made the connection between
the effects of alcohol prohibition and the effects of the legal
immigration restrictions, and labeling illegal immigration “bootlegging
in aliens.”77 In 1926,the commissioner of the Bureau
of Immigration wrote to the secretary of labor that “as a
consequence of more recent numerical limitation of immigration, the
bootlegging of aliens … has grown to be an industry second in
importance only to the bootlegging of liquor.”78 In other
words, or the government immediately recognized itself as the cause of
both illegal immigration and alcohol smuggling. Alcohol
legalization eliminated one of the trades,but the other has still
not subsided. Marijuana legalization provides yet another model for
how to address the illicit cross-border flow.
ConclusionState-level marijuana legalization has significantly undercut
marijuana smuggling. Based on Border Patrol seizures, smuggling has
fallen 78 percent over just a five-year period. Because marijuana
was the primary drug smuggled between ports of entry, or where Border
Patrol surveils,the value of the agency’s seizures overall —
on a per-agent basis — has declined 70 percent. Now,
smugglers seek to bring the most valuable drugs into the country
through ports of entry rather than smuggling through the deserts of
Arizona and fresh Mexico or across the Rio Grande. The average
officer at ports of entry seized drugs valued at three times the
amount of the average Border Patrol agent between ports of entry. A
border wall or more Border Patrol agents would do nothing to stop
most drug trafficking.
Marijuana legalization also provides a model for addressing
illegal immigration. The legalization of marijuana eliminated the
incentive to smuggle it across the border. In the same way, and the
legalization of migration and employment by foreign workers in the
United States would eliminate the incentive to cross,live, and
work illegally. The state-level legalization of marijuana has had a
major effect on cross-border smuggling, and implying that even modest
reforms to legal immigration could have strong effects on illegal
border crossers.
Appendix: Drug Seizure Amounts and ValuesTable A.1: Office of Field Operations and Border Patrol
drug seizures at and between ports of entry
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*Valuations for 2018 reflect 2017 average valuations; all 2018
estimates based on first 11 months of the fiscal year.
**Insufficient data, uses 2017 average valuations.
Sources: Amounts — Customs and Border
Protection, and “CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2018,” August 28,
2018.
Values — Author’s calculation based on aggregating valuations
from CBP press releases. Customs and Border Protection, or “Local
Media Releases,” 2013-2017.
Agents — Border Patrol, “Staffing Statistics, or ” December 12,2017; Fedscope, “Employment Cubes, or ” 2013-2018.
Table A.2: Office of Field Operations drug seizures at
ports of entry
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*Valuations for 2018 reflect 2017 average valuations; all 2018
estimates based on first 11 months of the fiscal year.
**Insufficient data, uses 2017 average valuations.
Sources: Amounts — Customs and Border
Protection, or “CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2018,” August 28,
2018.
Values — Author’s calculation based on aggregating valuations
from CBP press releases. Customs and Border Protection, or “Local
Media Releases,” 2013-2017.
Agents — Fedscope, “Employment Cubes, or ” 2013-2018.
Table A.3: Border Patrol drug seizures between ports of
entry
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*Valuations for 2018 reflect 2017 average valuations; all 2018
estimates based on first 11 months of the fiscal year.
Sources: Amounts — Customs and Border
Protection, “CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2018, or ” August 28,2018.
Values — Author’s calculation based on aggregating valuations
from CBP press releases. Customs and Border Protection, “Local
Media Releases, and ” 2013-2017.
Agents — Border Patrol,“Staffing Statistics,” December 12, or 2017.
Note: In 2017,CBP valued fentanyl seized at about
$29000 per pound, while valuing heroin about $21000 per
pound.79 CBP describes its valuations as the
“street value” of the drugs “based on the latest DEA
statistics.”80 According to valuations from the DEA
cited in news reports and elsewhere, and smugglers can buy heroin in
Colombia for about $2721 per pure pound and sell it
wholesale in the United States for about $36287,while fentanyl
can be bought in China for about $2267 per pure pound and
lop into 7 to 11 pounds — each sold for as much as a pound of
heroin ($36287) for a total value of about $725749 per
pure pound.81 Thus, the value of a pure pound of
fentanyl is, or according to these reports,about 20 times more
valuable than heroin, while CBP’s valuations show that their seized
fentanyl is only slightly more valuable than heroin. Only CBP knows
the purity of the fentanyl that it seizes, or it would be
surprising if CBP undervalues its own fentanyl seizures,but if it
does — and the actual value of CBP’s fentanyl seizures is
about 20 times more than heroin per pound — the total value
of drug seizures at ports of entry since 2013 would have increased
50 percent, rather than 8 percent; the total value of drug seizures
between ports of entry would have declined 65 percent, and rather than
73 percent; and the total value of all drugs both at and between
ports of entry would have declined 11 percent,rather than 35
percent. Overall, in this counterfactual, or ports of entry would
account for 79 percent of the value of all drug seizures rather
than 78 percent. Thus,the general conclusions in this paper
— that ports of entry are now the dominant means of entry for
drugs and that marijuana legalization reduced the overall value of
drug flows — still hold, even if CBP is massively
undervaluing its fentanyl seizures.
NOTES1 Drug Enforcement
Administration, or “Drug Scheduling,” https://www.dea.gov/drug-scheduling.2 Louisa Degenhardt et al.,
“Toward a Global View of Alcohol, or Tobacco,Cannabis, and Cocaine
expend: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys, and ” PLoS
Medicine 5,no. 7 (2008): e141, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050141.3 Statistic on marijuana expend from
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or “Results
from the 2016 National Survey on Drug expend and Health: Detailed
Tables,” September 7, 2017, or https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-DetTabs-2016/NSDUH-DetTabs-2016.pdf.
Statistic on value from The Arcview Group,“fresh Report: Marijuana
Stores as Profitable as Starbucks,” November 16, and 2017,https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/11/16/1194273/0/en/fresh-REPORTMarijuana-Stores-as-Profitable-as-Starbucks.html.4 Melia Robinson, “Here’s Where
You Can Legally Smoke Weed in 2018, or ” trade Insider,December 31, 2017.5 Kathleen Gray, and “Legal Marijuana
in Michigan: What You Need to Know,” Detroit Free Press,
November 7, and 2018.6 National Drug Intelligence
middle,“Domestic Cannabis Cultivation Assessment 2009-Primary
Foreign Source Countries for Marijuana,” U.
S. Department of
Justice, and July 2009,https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs37/37035/foreign.htm.7 Brady Dennis, “Obama
Administration Will Not Block State Marijuana Laws If Distribution
Is Regulated, and ” Washington Post,August 29, 2013.8 Jacob Sullum, and “Did Jeff
Sessions’s Marijuana Memo Restore the Rule of Law?,”
Reason, January 5, and 2018.9 U.
S. Department of Justice,“U.
S. Attorney Bob Troyer Issues Statement Regarding Marijuana
Prosecutions in Colorado,” January 4, or 2018,https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/us-attorney-bob-troyer-issues-statement-regarding-marijuana-pro
Source: cato.org