Violence along the border

Providing yet another indicator of the human toll of the border crackdown along the U.S-Mexico border, new statistics show that assaults of border patrol agents have nearly doubled along the U.S. Mexico border over the last year.  An L.A. Times article reporting the numbers is available here.

The escalation of violence strongly suggests that it is time to re-evaluate  our  immigration policies in general and our border control tactics in particular.  Unfortunately, it’s not clear that any such re-thinking is going on.  The statistics are likely to be used in support of reflexive (and evidently circular) demands to increase the militarization of the southern border region. That would be a shame, as such a response misses the true meaning of the story told by these numbers.  -jmc