USA Today reports that the American towns on the Mexican border are not “war zones” and have relatively low crime rates, which the anti-border folks point to as evidence that border enforcement is pointless and irrelevant (and, in the words of an amnesty lobbyist quoted in the story, an argument for “comprehensive immigration reform”).

Not exactly. First of all, the cartels wreaking havoc just yards away in Mexico have traditionally made sure not to cause trouble in U.S. border towns, so as not to bring down more attention to their activities; an officer in Arizona once told me of a Mexican criminal who’d fled back across the border but later turned himself in to the Border Patrol because the capo he answered to told him the alternative was death. Another factor is clear from the video that accompanies the USA Today story: almost every shot across the border looks over or through a fence, sometimes topped with razor wire. In the late 90s we also saw a big drop in crime in San Diego after the construction of the border fence there. What’s more, the Border Patrol is all over the place, with far more agents than a decade ago. As one resident told USA Today, “There is so much law enforcement down here right now … so it makes sense that it would be safer here than almost anywhere else in the country.” That’s an argument for border policing, not against it.

This kind of report can be useful in providing some context about the border. The border really is better policed than it used to be — there’s more that needs to be done, for sure, but all the money we’ve poured down there hasn’t been wasted. Of course, it’s hard for the anti-borders people to admit this because it means that we can control the border, even if we’re not all the way there yet. It also means that we’d probably get more bang for the buck from the next dollar spent on immigration enforcement from interior enforcement, like mandatory E-Verify and worksite raids and jailing illegals for identity theft.

That said, the border’s not peaceful everywhere. Arizona reporter Leo Banks has written extensively about the fear that residents of smuggling corridors live in; see, for instance, “Spilling Over?” and “A Dirty, Vicious Business.” The families of Rob Krentz and Brian Terry also would take issue with the idea that all is well. And just this week, the town of Columbus, N.M. (which Pancho Villa raided 95 years ago) had to dissolve its whole police department after the chief, the mayor, a village trustee, and others were arrested “for conspiring to smuggle hundreds of guns to drug cartels over the border.” And, finally, the Border Patrol arrested half a million illegal aliens sneaking across the border last year — that’s less than before, which is great, but hardly a sign that things are copacetic.

I’m delighted that border residents are breathing easier, and they have enforcement hawks to thank for that. But this administration’s complacent attitude toward the border is going to come back and bite them (and us) in the rear when a judge in San Antonio, say, is killed by a cartel car bomb or a Hezbollah-smuggled radiologicial weapon goes off in Phoenix, or even just the overnight arrival of a million Mexicans in South Texas fleeing the cartels. Something like that is going to happen unless we finish the job at the border, and we still have a long way to go.