I have just come back from leading a Home Affairs Select Committee trip to Washington and Mexico. No doubt the cynics will write this off as another junket but given that the very intensive round of meetings we held were inside fairly anonymous buildings we might just as well have been in Wolverhampton or Morecombe for all we saw of those countries themselves.
We were there to investigate a number of issues relevant to our current studies including counter-terrorism and extremism, drugs, immigration pressures and child sexual exploitation. With the New York bombings happening during our trip the counter-terrorism discussions were particularly topical. It is clear that the Americans are having to come to terms with the threat of radicalised Islamic terrorists having grown up within their borders as American citizens rather than imported from overseas. In this they have much to learn from the UK and Europe. We met representatives from the National Counter terrorism Center, Homeland Security Department, Justice Ministry and the CIA who slightly alarmingly for America’s senior intelligence body had me down on their guest list as Keith Vaz!
The picture we got from the Drug Enforcement Agency was very depressing where the real threat in the US now comes from a flood of illegally traded prescription drugs, particularly painkillers ‘popped’ like sweets. Drug overdose is now the leading cause of unintended death in the US and a sobering reminder of why our NHS and its more responsible prescribing policy is there for a reason.
We then travelled to the Mexican border to talk to Border Patrol officials on both sides and to hear why the Trump ‘big wall’ rhetoric is such a red herring especially as so many US companies are now setting up in Mexico and workers travelling across the border southwards in many cases. It was slightly alarming when we were met on the Mexican side of the border by three bullet proof cars and ten heavily armed bodyguards who formed a ‘ring of steel’ round us even at the burrito restaurant where we had lunch! However, given that Mexico has seen over 100,000 people killed in the drug wars run by the notorious cartels over the last 10 years, and the border city Ciudad Juarez we visited was the murder capital of the world until a few years ago, the precautions were perhaps necessary.
We travelled on to Mexico City, the most populated in the world where inevitably our discussions were dominated by the frightening prospect of the anti-Mexicanism of Donald Trump becoming a reality in the White House, as well as lots of enthusiasm for enhanced trade between the UK and this growing G20 country post Brexit. Next time it would be good to go back and actually see some of the country!