It’s not unusual to hear about someone trying to smuggle drugs into the U.S. from Mexico but it is unusual when even the Border Patrol calls it unusual.
That’s how they described the case of that 34 year old mother with five of her children in a minivan stopped for secondary inspection at the border. Border patrol agents discovered more than 200 packages of drugs with a street value of one million dollars hidden inside the tire wells, doors and gas tank.
The director of field operations for Customs and Border Patrol told the San Diego Union Tribune they’ve seen many forms of drug smuggling but “the hardest ones are when adults include their children in attempted smuggling schemes.”
We don’t know if this young woman was paid or forced to try to smuggle drugs across the border but what she did put those children at great risk.
And there was the case last weekend when suspected illegal immigrants, probably with a paid smuggler, were willing to put themselves at great risk, trying to get into the U.S hiding in a huge horse trailer that crashed on the 8 freeway in the mountains.
The latest reports show the number of arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico is down, but that doesn’t mean they are anywhere near ending.
Whether for devious criminal reasons or for desperate personal survival reasons, many still try to sneak into the U.S.
Tough talk and a big border wall may reduce illegal crossings, but the illegal immigration problem is a human problem that involves some people being bad people and some people being desperate people.
How America responds could say a lot about how great America is.
(Photo credit Getty Images)