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I don't see any inconsistency between "when policing a border, a certain level of stringency and invasiveness is required when the people trying to enter the country include underage terrorists who have been groomed into committing suicide bombings; but that level of stringency and invasiveness is inappropriate when policing a border to prevent economic migrants from gaining illegitimate access to a country".
Frankly I think it’s a miracle that we haven’t seen any kind of massive cross-border terrorist attack like the one portrayed in Sicario: Day of the Soldado. And I think if the border isn’t secured it’s only a matter of time before that kind of thing happens. Especially given that the State Department keeps antagonizing multiple peer adversaries that could easily fund and coordinate that kind of attack. The security situations on the American border and the Israeli borders are very similar, but many people of various political and ethnic stripes engage in ridiculous casuistry to differentiate them.
It's less a miracle and more of a consequence of how the cross-border dynamic of human smuggling works. In short, the cartels have strong incentives to not only not go along with it, but to punish defectors (other cartels who might), and this lack of reliability and secrecy renders it not particularly feasible for state actors.
The cartels have been competing with the US government and mexican authorities for a long time, but part of that is also because they selective cooperate to take down rivals / settle feuds / use the MEX/US authorities to go after their business rivals rather than themselves. Since the drug business is profit-motivated, unnecessary conflict with the US authorities is generally avoided up to a point. This is one of the reasons that the Mexican drug wars, while bloody in absolute terms, have been relatively low-collateral damage to American citizens- if you do something high profile against the US, not only have you put a target on your back from increased US attention, but your competitors have a prime opportunity to bring you low. This is how you get Mexican cartels killing their own as a sort of apology for getting Americans killed. This is without going into how the drug cartels themselves are penetrated by Mexican / American law enforcement agencies.
Why this matters for the state-terrorism angle is that other countries know this, not least because back in 2011 an Iranian attempt to use Mexican cartel hitmen to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US made the minor oops of hiring an FBI informant as the assassin.
Further, state terrorism is actually a pretty poor strategy for direct competition because if you were willing to launch the equivalent of a missile strike in the first place (several bombs on objectives), you'd just use missiles in the first place (which countries like Iran and Russia have). The advantage of terrorism isn't the damage, but the non-attribution... but if you're going to be attributed anyways (say because you take credit, or because you are compromised by untrustworthy Mexican cartels you relied upon to get across the border who are belatedly trying to cover their own ass), you're not any less vulnerable to a retaliatory missile strike than if you did something more overt.
Terrorism / bombings work in an insurgency context because of the ability to hide within the population which negates the ability / wisdom of retaliation. However, a cross-border migration attack wouldn't be able to hide amongst the American side or the Mexican cartels.
There are ways this could change- and it's a policy argument against trying to declare mexican cartels as terrorist organizations (as then they'd have less to lose from working with actual terrorists)- but without credible plausibility a terror-bombing is just a way to get into a direct military conflict with a country who the perpetrators primary national security strategies are about not coming into direct conflict with.
Agreed. The last thing that the cartels want is some 9/11 type attack which causes the US to ramp up their action against organized crime to GWB's war on terror level. That would be terrible for their profits and life expectancy.
I am not even sure that the Iranian government would want to sponsor large terror attacks on US soil. Sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah is one thing, but poking the US in the eye would go badly for them. (Of course, a government administration is made out of people, whose goals are not always aligned with their country, but getting the US to bomb the shit out of them would likely not benefit anyone in power.)
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There are lots of people who claim to have run into Arabs- like actual from the Middle East Arabs- pretending to be Mexican or Guatemalan to get into the U.S. and behaving in ways that are more suspicious than usual for illegal immigrants(most of those who report it are illegals or adjacent to that community themselves). My guess is that most of these are just economic migrants whose odd behavior can be chocked up to cultural differences, but it’s certainly not implausible that there are eg Iranian assets hiding among the illegal immigrant population for whatever purpose. Obviously the lack of terrorism indicates that they’re not committing mass terror.
My understanding from stories ive heard is that those sorts seem to have a habit of coming to a bad end or otherwise just "disappearing" presumably for the very reasons @Dean describes.
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