Border by the Numbers
The Southwest border, by the numbers: 2,000: approximate number of miles the U.S. Southwest border shares with Mexico; $18-39 billion: estimated number of illegal dollars that flow annually from the U.S. accross the Southwest border to enrich Mexican drug cartels; 2,600: number of drug-related muders in Juarez, Mexico in 2009; 28,000: number of drug-related muders in Mexico since 2006; 93%: estimated amount of all South American cocaine that moves through Mexico on its way to U.S. customers; 701,000: kilograms of marijuana seized during the first five months of 2010 in the Southwest border states (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas); 6,154: total number of individual seizures of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine during the first five months of 2010 in the Southwest border states; 12: the number of FBI border corruption task forces operating along the Southwest border; 1: the number of corrupt border guards it would take to allow a terrorist carrying a weapon of mass destruction into the U.S. |