They also have Operation Clean Sheets, where they've been raiding about a hundred large hotels. People are very frightened right now. We may be seeing the beginnings of de facto apartheid in the southwest. Working-class Latinos live under a different set of laws than Anglos. The entire social landscape of the border region is being remolded by the politics of the militarized frontier.
Employers get frightened and obedient workers.
And the national security state gets a bulwark against the slow-motion social and economic implosion of Latin America. Only now the price is higher, in both human and financial terms.