Censorship has Consequences
On January 9, 2009, American Border Patrol issued a press release entitled “Does the Border Fence Work?” In it, ABP announced a press conference to be held at the National Press Club on January 15 to, among other things, “show a strong correlation between the construction of the border fence and drug-related deaths in Mexico between 2005 and 2009.”
At that press conference ABP used data from its aerial surveys of the border demonstrate this correlation.
ABP argued that if a small amount of fencing had such an impact, surely completing the border fence would go a long way toward ending the stranglehold the drug cartels have on Mexico.
We called it – “The light at the end of the tunnel.” Despite the significance of our claim, no one from the media attended the press conference. We began to understand that this was part of an overall blackout of our work.
Now, more than a year later, the Mexican government has confirmed that border enforcement is behind the increase in violence in Mexico, not the so-called crackdown by Mexican President Calderon. (See Mexicans Say U.S. Drug Crackdown Feeds Violence)
It is sad to think that political bias has kept the truth about the fence from the public. It is sad because completing that fence could well have saved thousands of lives because the cartels would have had nothing to fight over. Once again we have learned that censorship has its consequences.