Drug Trafficking Case Study

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Securing the southwest border from drug trafficking means that the Department of Homeland Security must continue to enhance their multiagency coordinated efforts, increase manpower and presence along smuggling routes, increase their private sector partnerships and utilize technological capabilities to stay ahead of the TCO’s and the threats they pose to national security. The fact that heroin and cocaine are not produced within the United States means that in order for it to be found in any city within the U.S. means it had to crossed a border into the U.S. using the intelligence from SLTT and fusion centers of drug seizures across the U.S. can help investigators locate sources, dealers and street gang affiliations to TCO’s. As mentioned in the previous section the use of fusion centers as a source for collection, analysis, and sharing of information is pertinent to the investigative process and ultimately the …show more content…
The southwest border covers approximately 2,000 miles of land and desert, however, it is also important to acknowledge that TCO’s will utilize multiple all various ports of entry land, sea, and air in order to smuggle drugs into the U.S. TCO’s are continually adjusting their methods of transport to avert seizure of operations. This means that it is important to effectively have agencies covering the various routes that can be taken and use the information sharing systems to collaborate efforts between Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) enable a multifaceted approach to the various entry routes. Increased manpower is also essential to creating a vast presence along the land, sea and air borders. At this point in time, the southwest border is the most staffed that it has been in the last eighty years, with boots on the ground going from 9,100 officers to 18,500 to date (DHS, 2016). However, manpower alone cannot eliminate the capabilities of TCO’s from engaging in illegal drug