Will Trump’s Wall Stop Drug Smuggling?

President Donald Trump says that his proposed wall along the Mexico border “will stop much of the drugs from pouring into this country.” We cannot predict the future, but the fact is that most illicit drugs pass undetected through legal ports of entry.

Mexican cartels “transport the bulk of their drugs over the Southwest Border through ports of entry (POEs) using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers,” the Drug Enforcement Administration said in a 2015 report. “The drugs are typically secreted in hidden compartments when transported in passenger vehicles or comingled with legitimate goods when transported in tractor trailers.”

In an essay published earlier this month, Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,  that “a barrier in the form of a wall is increasingly irrelevant to the drug trade as it is now practiced because most of the drugs