OPINION

Viewpoint: Oklahoma Gov. Stitt's border visit was purely political theatrics

Nick Alexandrov
Guest Columnist
Nick Alexandrov

Someone should adapt Gov. Kevin Stitt’s U.S.-Mexico border trip for the stage — a comedy that could start with a three-night run at the Civic Center Music Hall. It was pure political theater.

After Texas and Border Patrol officials briefed him and eight other Republican governors last Wednesday, he deemed the region in “crisis” — one “that President (Joe) Biden created.” Stitt cited, as evidence, the million border-crossers apprehended this past year, plus the methamphetamine-fentanyl surge from Mexico into Oklahoma. Both trends are real. But they don’t mean what Stitt wants them to.

Take the million border-crossers. Stitt called the number “a record,” but “the norm” is a better label. There were over 1 million apprehensions as far back as 1983 — and for most of the following years until 2007, when the Great Recession hit. The number of southern Border Patrol agents rose sharply during that stretch, from 1,995 in Fiscal Year 1983, to 13,297 in FY 2007. But Stitt still believes in the wisdom — in the efficacy — of massing troops along the Mexican line. 

Turn next to drugs. It’s true the state Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control (OBN) calls methamphetamine our “greatest drug threat.” And fentanyl-related overdoses were up 157% in 2020, OBN data shows. With both substances, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports most of the supply is smuggled in from Mexico.

But these problems predate Biden. The DEA traces methamphetamine’s spread to 2014, and border seizures of the drug went up 74% from 2018 to 2019. Border Patrol confiscations of fentanyl climbed 62% that same year — under President Donald Trump, the man Stitt praised for promoting “strong border security.”

What this “security” really does — instead of stopping people or drugs — is cause mass migrant death. The policy dates to 1994, when the Border Patrol, under President Bill Clinton, launched Prevention Through Deterrence (PTD).

PTD had three aims. First: expand the Border Patrol’s presence in established entry points like San Diego or El Paso, forcing migrants into the desert if they wished to cross undetected. Second: let the desert claim its victims. Third: witness fear of apprehension in, say, El Paso, or dread of a Sonoran Desert death, deter future migrants. PTD failed in this respect.

Though there were other benchmarks. If the “strategy is successful,” the U.S. General Accounting Office wrote in 1997, “deaths may increase.” And they did. The Border Patrol guesses about 8,000 have died crossing in recent decades. But because of official count deficiencies, and because desert scavengers disappear human remains, reporter Todd Miller believes “the actual death toll is triple” the official figure.

That’s one crisis Stitt won’t acknowledge. Another has killed as many as 10,616 Oklahomans — nearly 56 times the state's 2019-2020 fentanyl toll — since last year. These deaths were preventable, but Stitt won’t acknowledge COVID-19 either. Instead he’s on the border, play-acting at leadership as his approval rating, according to Amber Integrated, drops.

Now would be the perfect time for him to adopt that “personal responsibility” he champions.

Nick Alexandrov works as a reporter and educator in Tulsa, and has a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University.