Border "Czar" and Drug Funds
Hitting Where It Hurts September 17, 2009 Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Alan Bersin — the so-called "Border Czar" — was back in the old neighborhood last week to visit the U.S.-Mexico border and address an audience at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California at San Diego. The former United States attorney in San Diego played a big role in increasing border security in the 1990s by helping to implement "Operation Gatekeeper" along the U.S.-Mexico border. Before his speech, which covered everything from immigration to the drug war to the safety of U.S. travelers in Mexico, Bersin took a moment to draw attention to the issue of vehicle inspections at the border and the good they’ve done in the war on drugs. According to Bersin, stepped-up inspections of vehicles heading to Mexico from the United States have yielded more than $40 million in seizures of bulk cash since April. That’s a serious blow to the drug cartels, which are forc