Well, then, I submit to you that your present security is illusory. Sooner or later, they’ll be moving up from Mexico, and your family will be killed in the crossfire anyway. This is what happens in medicine when a body doesn’t want to undertake chemo or surgery before a cancer metastacizes.
The American border is threatened to the South. The thing to do is send troops South, and stop expecting policemen to operate effectively outside of their jurisdiction, at the sufferance of a compromised foreign government that is their host. The Mexican government can either ally itself with the US, or with the cartels, but the US must invade their compounds and kill, not arrest them.
If the government of Mexico has a problem with that, then the US can make war on them as well. I don’t think they will have a problem. In fact, I’d expect them to be an ally, and say so as if it were a given. They would at least pretend it’s so, in order to save face. Then anyone who is caught collaborating with a cartel can be purged from the ranks of Mexican politics/military/law enforcement. If this be imperialism, then make the best of it.
Um it could be dealt with before it eventually moved up here. But progressives and libertarians don’t want to deal with it proactively, save for the failed “legalize drugs” solution.
The solution isn’t capitualtion, which is the ‘legalize drugs’ theory.