Novice Starter Pack (Surveillance PF 2024)

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Surveillance PF Novice Practice Set.
Pro Constructive...............................................................................................................................................................3
Con Constructive............................................................................................................................................................13
Pro Rebuttals..................................................................................................................................................................22
Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Rights/Causes Tyranny............................................................................. 23
Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Asylum..................................................................................................... 24
Pro Rebuttal to Undermines Humanitarian Obligations............................................................................................ 25
Pro Rebuttals to Humanitarianism.............................................................................................................................26
Pro Frontlines to Con Rebuttals..................................................................................................................................... 27
Framework.................................................................................................................................................................28
Answers to: Governments Should Help People..................................................................................................... 29
Answers to: Protecting the National Interest Causes Violence.............................................................................. 30
Drugs/Fentanyl.......................................................................................................................................................... 31
Crime......................................................................................................................................................................... 36
Answers to: Immigrants Less Likely to Commit Crimes..........................................................................................37
Answers to: Criminals Are Just Released Anyhow..................................................................................................38
Terrorism....................................................................................................................................................................39
Answers to: No Immigrant Terrorists..................................................................................................................... 40
Answers to: Department of Defense Trade-Off......................................................................................................41
Answers to: Won’t Use a Nuke...............................................................................................................................42
Economy.................................................................................................................................................................... 43
Answers to: Poverty of the Migrants......................................................................................................................44
Answers to: Immigrants Boost the Economy......................................................................................................... 45
Con Rebuttals.................................................................................................................................................................46
Con Rebuttal to Framework.......................................................................................................................................47
Con Rebuttal to Terrorism..........................................................................................................................................48
Con Rebuttal to Crime................................................................................................................................................51
Con Rebuttal to Low Wage Work............................................................................................................................... 52
Con Rebuttal to Social Service Cuts........................................................................................................................... 53
Con Frontline to Pro Rebuttals.......................................................................................................................................54
Surveillance/Tyranny/Dehumanization......................................................................................................................55
Answers to: Surveillance Already Widespread.......................................................................................................56
Answers to: Governments Were Tyrannical Before............................................................................................... 57
Answers to: Checks and Balances Prevent Tyranny............................................................................................... 58
Humanitarianism....................................................................................................................................................... 59
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Answers to: Too Many Gaps/More Dangerous Routes.......................................................................................... 60
Answers to: We Aren’t Responsible....................................................................................................................... 61
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Pro Constructive
My partner and I support the resolution that, The United States federal government should substantially expand its
surveillance infrastructure along its southern border.
Our framework is the well-being of the country.
Philosopher Michael Blake explained in 2023 that

Michael Blake, Philosopher, 2003, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 41, Issue 2, Immigration, Jurisdiction, and Exclusion,
pages 103–130, Spring 2013
What I want to emphasize, in this context, is that, while the first demand is universal, the second two are
emphatically local. The state is under a universal demand to avoid violating human rights, that is, whether the
violation occurs within its jurisdiction or not. But the state is under no correspondingly universal obligation to
protect or fulfill the rights of humans qua humans. The state is instead obliged to protect and fulfill the rights of
only some humans, namely, those who happen to be present within its territorial jurisdiction. This limitation does
not seem by itself to run up against the liberal demand for the equality of persons; it is instead the means by which
that equality is to be made operational in a world of territorial states. Thus, an assault in France upon a French
citizen is undoubtedly a violation of human rights, and is undoubtedly to be regretted by all states, French or
otherwise. But the United States is not obliged to devote its institutional capacity to the vindication of the rights
of the French citizen to be free from assault. (Indeed, it would likely strike the French government as rather
problematic if the Americans began to build institutions devoted to the punishment of French rights-violators.) The
United States is able to devote its own institutional capacity to the protection and fulfillment of the rights of those
present on American soil. It does this not because it values French lives less than American lives; after all, it
would—if it were just—devote just as much time and effort to an assault upon a French tourist as to an assault upon
an American citizen. It is able to devote its own institutional capacity in this way because of the jurisdictional
limitation of the United States government, which is authorized and obligated to protect and fulfill human rights
only within a particular part of the world's surface.18 Those who participate in the American system, further, are
authorized and obligated to help support this system's ability to protect and fulfill human rights in this way.
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Contention I. Border Security
Current border surveillance is inadequate. The Office of the Inspector General explained in 2021 that
Office of the Inspector General,2021,

https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2021-02/OIG-21-21-Feb21.pdf, CBP Has Improved Southwest
Border Technology, but Significant Challenges Remain,
In response to Executive Order 13767, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has implemented an array of new tools and
technologies that have enhanced Border Patrol’s surveillance capabilities and efficiency along the southwest border. However,
these upgrades are incomplete as CBP has deployed about 28 percent of the surveillance and subterranean
technology solutions planned, even after receiving more than $700 million in funding since fiscal year 2017. Shifting priorities, construction delays, a
lack of available technology solutions, and funding constraints hindered CBP’s planned deployments. Consequently, most southwest Border Patrol
sectors still rely predominantly on obsolete systems and infrastructure with limited capabilities. CBP also uses a
variety of independent and standalone surveillance systems and tools to enhance situational awareness and
increase agents’ capability to observe and respond to illegal activities along the border. Commonly used systems
and tools include fixed and mobile surveillance equipment, agentcentric devices, unmanned aircraft, and sensor
detection systems and devices.
We need to expand surveillance
Dan Goure, 9-19-20writes in 2021, Dr. Goure is a researcher at the Lexington Institute. "Did Biden Halt the Deployment of Advanced Surveillance Systems at the
Border?," National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/did-biden-halt-deployment-advanced-surveillance-systems-border-193881
McD [recut JN]
Biden terminated funding for former President Donald Trump’s controversial border wall, an
Advanced surveillance technologies were a critical component of the Trump administration's construction program. When President Joe
deployment of several advanced electronic surveillance capabilities. Ironically, on many parts of the
unintended consequence of that decision was to stop
border, these systems provide an alternative to a physical wall. Advanced surveillance capabilities act as a force multiplier
for badly overstretched Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) personnel. At a time when activities on the border are increasing at a remarkable pace, both crossings by migrants and asylum seekers and drug
smuggling, it is imperative that we give those securing the southwestern border the tools they need. The Biden administration and Congress need to restore that portion of the funding for the wall that was designated for advanced surveillance capabilities.
CBP is under tremendous pressure on multiple fronts. Most publicized is the increase in migrants presenting themselves at the border . The rate of attempted crossings along the border with
Mexico has more than tripled from this time last year. There has also been a major increase in the number of
unaccompanied children attempting to cross, leading to scenes of young children being abandoned on the U.S. side
of the border. To demonstrate the value of electronic border surveillance, cameras captured two small children being
dropped over a portion of the border fence to then fend for themselves earlier this year. In addition, drug smuggling has increased significantly since
last year. CBP reported a 233 percent increase in fentanyl seizures from 2020 to 2021 so far. It has been suggested that Mexican drug cartels are helping migrants reach the border to stress
CBP resources so there is less chance of their smuggling operations being detected and intercepted. Securing the border has always been
about more than just building walls. CBP has been investing in technologies for enhanced surveillance, communications, and situational awareness for more than twenty years. Major advances have occurred in land-based electro-optical and radar sensors,
surveillance aircraft, balloons and drones, ground sensors, fiber optic communications, advanced analytics and AI, and the development of a common operating picture. CBP has deployed combinations of these technologies at various sectors along the
remote sensing using a variety

border, sometimes in addition to physical barriers. In other cases, they are deployed as the primary means of monitoring the border. One capability that CBP has found extremely effective is
of cameras and radar systems attached to both fixed and mobile towers. CBP has worked with industry for years to develop the specific technologies needed to provide reliable and
cost-effective remote surveillance. These towers allow CBP to monitor the border and be alerted to human activity
without having to devote already-scarce manpower. In this process, data is gathered and fused at command centers where
artificial intelligence assists in making accurate assessments of events in the field. Likewise, several different tower-based remote sensing capabilities have been
deployed. One example is the Integrated Fixed Tower (IFT) system, consisting of high fixed towers topped with electro-optical and infrared cameras, ground-searching radars and a laser rangefinder capable of seeing at ranges greater than 10 kilometers. The
IFT system is particularly well-suited to looking into Mexico from positions relatively far from the border. Another system that has been deployed is the Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS), consisting of a mix of fixed and truck-mounted mobile towers
generally deployed close to the border. A third framework is the Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST) system which, like the other tower programs, employs multi-spectral sensing to provide situational awareness of the border. As the name suggests, the
towers are designed with a high degree of autonomy, made possible, in part, by reliance on solar power, to reduce the demand on CBP personnel. As part of the Trump administration’s wall construction project, CBP invested in a combination of ground-based
acoustic, vibration, and visual sensors, including fiber optic cables, that can detect activity at the border. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, algorithms can distinguish natural phenomena and animals from human beings. This system uses
artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to help create a common operating picture in support of CBP command and control.
While most of the reporting of the Trump administration’s approach to border security focused on
the construction of a physical wall, advanced surveillance technologies such as those described above were part of this construction program. Halting construction of the wall does not mean that the Biden administration
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There is a lot of
will be able to reap significant savings. Much of the money allocated in the current and prior fiscal years has been spent. Other wall-related funding is only available in the year in which it is budgeted (“one year money”).
unanticipated collateral damage to CBP’s planned investment in advanced technologies from the way the Biden
administration has handled cancelling construction of the wall. This decision did not just stop construction of the physical wall. It also put a
halt to construction and deployment of a host of surveillance capabilities that were key to CBP’s overall plan for
monitoring the border. There are systems, including some of the towers discussed above, that have been built and were just waiting to be
deployed. Now the government, having already paid for these towers and other surveillance capabilities, will have to store
them, at considerable expense. The sudden cancellation of all activities that fell under the contracts involved in construction of the wall will have a serious negative effect on CBP’s efforts to invest in advanced surveillance
systems that can serve as an alternative to a physical wall. This comes at a particularly bad time for CBP, which is struggling to deal with the increase in migration and smuggling activities along the border. Deploying these
advanced sensor systems would help alleviate this stress as well as significantly improve CBP’s ability to prevent
humanitarian problems along a dangerous border. The Biden administration should revisit the way it cancelled the construction of the wall. It needs to break out the funds that would have gone for
technology meant to supplement or even replace physical barriers. It also needs to increase overall funding for CBP, which is having to take money from its modernization efforts to meet the increase in operational
tempo fueled by the surge of migrants and illicit activity at the border.
Subpoint A. Crime
Criminals who commit violence are crossing the border
Michael Lee, 6-25, 24, Fox News, Border security: Massive spike in criminal migrants entering US since 2021, data
shows, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/massive-spike-criminal-migrants-entering-us-since-2021-data-shows
The amount of criminal immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. has spiked in recent years, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection data reveals. Over 13,000 "criminal noncitizens" have attempted to enter the U.S. and been apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Fiscal Year 2024,
a rise from 4,269 in FY 2019. CBP
defines "criminal noncitizens" as "individuals who have been convicted of one or more
crimes, whether in the United States or abroad, prior to interdiction by the U.S. Border Patrol," the agency's website notes. Such border
apprehensions had been on the decline before FY 2021, with CBP recording 8,531 in 2017, 6,698 in 2018, 4,269 in 2019, and 2,438 in 2020.
Since then, however, the number has continued to rise, hitting 10,763 in 2021, 12,028 in 2022, and 15,267 in 2023, the most recent full
year for which data is available. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT SUSPECT ACCUSED OF KILLING JOCELYN NUNGARAY WORE ICE ANKLE MONITOR A Border Patrol processes
an immigrant Immigrants are photographed at a U.S. Border Patrol processing center after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on December 07, 2023 in
Lukeville, Arizona. (John Moore/Getty Images) Many
of the criminal aliens who have been caught at the border this year have
been convicted of serious crimes, including 814 for assault, battery, or domestic violence; 23 for homicide or
manslaughter; and 168 for sexual offenses. But the data does not account for the number of criminal aliens who
were able to slip into the country undetected or were released with unclear criminal backgrounds , cases that have once again entered the
national spotlight. Such cases include the arrest of Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a 23-year-old illegal El Salvadorian migrant accused of raping and killing Maryland mother Rachel Morin. Martinez Herhandez had attempted to enter the country illegally four times after being accused of a similar murder in his native
El Salvador, the last of which he was able to elude the detection of border security. In another case, two Venezuelan migrants are accused in the killing of Houston-area 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. In that case, suspects Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Peña Ramos, 26, entered the country illegally and
were released with court dates. Rachel Morin, left and her alleged killer Victor Martinez Hernandez is accused of the rape and murder of Rachel Morin August 5, 2023, in Bel Air, Maryland. (Hartford County Sheriff’s Office/Tulsa Police Department) ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT SUSPECT ACCUSED OF KILLING JOCELYN NUNGARAY
WORE ICE ANKLE MONITOR placeholder While neither suspect had a previous criminal record in Harris County, their background in their native Venezuela is less clear as a result of a lack of cooperation in sharing information between the Venezuelan and U.S. governments. The two then made their way to what has
become an immigrant hotspot in Houston, where Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told Fox News has seen an uptick in illegal immigrant crime. Jocelyn Nungaray murder suspects in separate mug shots Franklin Jose Peña Ramos, left, and Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel have been charged in the killing of Jocelyn
"Unfortunately, we see a great deal of violence committed by illegal

Nungaray in Houston, Texas, on Monday, June 17. (Harris County Jail) CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
immigrants, and we see as many victimized by other illegals and regular people here. It’s an enormous problem. This
was bound to happen," she told Fox News. "It’s one of those things that as an elected prosecutor, you are just waiting for other shoe to drop. I’m just sick and
sickened this little girl was the innocent victim of these two monsters."
Fentanyl trafficking is destroying America. DEA in May reads that-
DEA. “National Drug Threat Assessment.” DEA.gov, May 2024,

https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/NDTA_2024.pdf.
Fentanyl manufactured by the Mexican cartels is the main driver behind the ongoing epidemic of
drug poisoning deaths in the United States. Further complicating the fentanyl threat is the addition of the dangerous veterinary
tranquilizer xylazine to the fentanyl to create what is known as “tranq.” Fentanyl is also being hidden in other powder drugs such as cocaine and heroin and,
to a lesser extent, methamphetamine. Users often take these drugs without knowing they contain fentanyl, which greatly increases the risk of poisoning.
Fake prescription pills containing fentanyl present[s] an extreme danger. Most of these fake pills are made to look nearly
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identical to real prescription pills, such as oxycodone (M30, Percocet); hydrocodone (Vicodin); or alprazolam (Xanax) – the fentanyl content in these fake
In 2023, DEA forensic laboratory analysis showed that approximately 7
pills is known only after laboratory analysis.
in 10 fake pills contain a potentially deadly dose of fentanyl (approximately 2 milligrams). Fentanyl
also poses an ongoing threat to law enforcement personnel and other first responders who may encounter it in the
performance of their duties. China-based chemical suppliers are the main source of the chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl. The Sinaloa and
Jalisco cartels manufacture fentanyl in clandestine labs they oversee in Mexico, in both powder form and pressed into fake pills, and traffic it into the United
States through any of the many entry points they control.
the number of fatal overdoses

The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have cemented their role in supplying fentanyl to the United States as
involving illicit opioids has risen. According to the CDC, 68 percent of all drug poisoning deaths in
2022 – 74,225 of the 111,036 total – were caused by synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl (see Figure 7,
above). CDC provisional data shows that synthetic opioids were the cause of another 38,000 deaths in the first six months of 2023. The Sinaloa and Jalisco
cartels are using social media platforms to flood the U.S. drug market with fentanyl and other illicit drugs. Using both open and encrypted platforms and
messaging applications, the cartels advertise drugs for sale, process payments for drugs, recruit and train couriers and dealers, communicate with customers,
and plan transactions – all online. Encryption on many platforms has diminished law enforcement’s visibility into drug trafficking and other crimes committed
using these platforms and applications.
cartels maintain a web of networks to smuggle drugs into the United States, to include air and sea
The
cargo, vehicular and pedestrian traffic, border tunnels, and stash houses on
both sides of the border, and then further direct drug trafficking and distribution inside the United States. The DEA continues to seize record amounts
of illicit fentanyl every year. DEA continues to seize record amounts of illicit fentanyl every year, from 6,875 kilograms of powder fentanyl in 2021 to nearly
twice that amount – 13,176 kilograms in 2023; and close to 79 million pills containing fentanyl in 2023, more than triple the 23.6 million pills seized in 2021
(see Figure 8). Fentanyl poisonings and law enforcement seizures of fentanyl have increased steadily since 2013
Schoeberl quantifies [Richard Schoeberl (Ph.D., has over 30 years of law enforcement experience, including the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He has served in a variety of
positions throughout his career, ranging from a supervisory special agent at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington,
DC, to unit chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section at the NCTC’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Before these organizations, he worked as a special agent investigating violent crime, human trafficking, international
terrorism, and organized crime. Additionally, he has authored numerous scholarly articles, serves as a peer mentor
with the Police Executive Research Forum, is currently a professor of Criminology and Homeland Security at the
University of Tennessee-Southern, and works with Hope for Justice – a global nonprofit combating human
trafficking), The Nexus Between Drug and Human Trafficking, 6-5-2024, Domestic Preparedness,
https://www.domesticpreparedness.com/articles/the-nexus-between-drug-and-human-trafficking] accessed
8-16-2024 // bellaire FL
Their routine participation and involvement

with affiliated crimes such as human smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking, public corruption, and
violence pose a serious threat to homeland security and further jeopardize public safety. The TCOs’ production and trafficking of fentanyl
to the U.S. has fueled a continuing opioid crisis. The DEA reported that fentanyl was responsible for the deaths of
74,225 Americans in 2022 and almost 38,000 Americans in the first six months of 2023, making it the deadliest U.S. drug threat.
Subpoint B. Terrorism
Allison & Morrell explained in 2024 that

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Allison & Morrell, June 10, 2024, GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University; MICHAEL J. MORELL is Senior Counselor and
Global Head of Geostrategic Risk at Beacon Global Strategy. He was Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, The Terrorisrim Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again, Foreign
Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/terrorism-warning-lights-are-blinking-red-again
check_logged_in=1&utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=article_link&utm_term=article_email&utm_content=20240627
Next, consider means and opportunity. Airport security may have tightened significantly since 9/11, but weekly mass
shootings prove that it remains relatively easy in the United States to buy high-powered assault weapons and
enough ammunition to kill large numbers of people in a short period of time. Last year, hundreds of individuals on
the United States’ terrorist watch list attempted to enter the country via the southern border. It is not difficult to
imagine a person, or even a group, with the intent to do harm slipping across a border—where U.S. officials
reported 2.5 million encounters with migrants in 2023—and then purchasing assault rifles and carrying out a large
massacre. There is no shortage of locations across the United States where hundreds, if not thousands, of people
gather on a regular basis—and all may be ready targets for those seeking to incite terror.
Crista Bryant explained in July that

Crista Case Bryant, 7-1, 24,
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2024/0701/biden-trump-terrorism-border-security-china, Christian
Science Monitor, Are terrorists slipping across the US border? What the evidence show
Part of the challenge is how to allocate U.S. resources. Mr. O’Leary, who worked on FBI counterterrorism
investigations for more than two decades until stepping down last fall, says the government has pivoted away from
the terrorism threat to focus on Russia, China, and great-power competition. He stresses the need to stay alert,
20-plus years into the global war on terror, with U.S.-designated terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS,
growing. For example, Al Qaeda’s core membership increased approximately tenfold from 2001 to 2018, according
to estimates
There is a growing risk of ISIS attack in the US from immigrated terrorists. David Ignatius explains
that
David Ignatius, 6-26, 24, Washington Post, That clock ticking on our border policy impasse could be a time bomb,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/26/border-policy-terrorist-time-bomb/
. America, with its porous border, is vulnerable to the stream of people who enter the country every day. FBI
Director Christopher A. Wray has been delivering hair-on-fire warnings about this problem for months. His latest
came in June 4 testimony to a Senate committee: “Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack
here in the homeland” such as the March attack by Tajik members of ISIS-K that killed 139 people at a Moscow
concert hall. In early June, the FBI and DHS arrested eight Tajik migrants in New York, Philadelphia and Los
Angeles. The operation, aided by FBI wiretaps, was first reported by the New York Post. The paper said that at least one of the suspects had slipped into the country across the Mexico border more than a
year ago. Surveillance showed that some of the Tajiks had used “extremist rhetoric,” according to CNN. “Rather than risk the worst-case scenario of a potential attack, senior US officials decided to move in and have
the men apprehended,” CNN reported. Concern about the ISIS-K threat grew earlier this year when the intelligence community received new information that more than 400 Central Asian migrants had entered the
United States through a “human smuggling network” potentially connected to ISIS, according to NBC News. Because of what one official told me was “extra caution,” about 150 of these “persons of interest” have
This flow of Central Asian migrants is a new headache for DHS. Officials
been arrested, but about 50 haven’t been located, the network said.
estimate that about 40 people from that region cross into the United States every day, and that there are now
“tens of thousands” of undocumented migrants here from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and other Central
Asian countries. Most are economic migrants arriving through smuggling networks that operate using social
media, cheap travel, transit through layovers in Europe — and then easy entry into the United States. The big gap
in the system is that DHS lacks the tools to vet potentially dangerous migrants seeking asylum at border points of
entry. It needs more people and resources to query classified databases and use biometric data. Despite the lessons
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of 9/11, intelligence agencies remain wary about sharing highly classified information without secure facilities, which
are lacking at most border posts.
This could involve a nuclear attack. Squassoni explains
Squassoni 10/9/15 - senior fellow and director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at CSIS
Sharon Squassoni and Amelia Armitage, "Nuclear Smuggling: From Moldova to ISIS?"
csis.org/publication/nuclear-smuggling-moldova-isis
While experts can debate the probability of a nuclear terrorist incident, no one debates the consequences. Nuclear
terrorism is considered one of the biggest threats to U.S. national security today, and the United States and many of its allies have worked
hard since 2001 to reduce the risks. The Obama administration began a series of nuclear security summits in 2010 to enhance awareness of the risks and will
host the final summit in March 2016 in Washington, D.C. Q2: What would it mean if these materials were to wind up in the hands of extremists? A2: The
most recent case in Moldova involved cesium—a highly radioactive material that cannot be used in a nuclear weapon but could be paired with
ordinary explosives to create a radioactive mess. This kind of “dirty bomb” is considered to be within most terrorist groups’
wherewithal, as opposed to the more technically demanding challenge of acquiring/manufacturing a nuclear weapon. A dirty bomb would
disperse radioactivity, potentially contaminating a wide area and causing panic. Q3: What is the risk of such an attack? A3:
Terrorists typically seek targets of opportunity, which is why it is so important to secure such material before it enters the black market. Over the years, a number
of potential sales have been interrupted or the material confiscated during sting operations. Often, the perpetrators are arrested during the sale of sample
material, raising the question whether larger quantities actually exist in the black market. To date, no dirty bomb has been used, and our capabilities globally to
detect radioactive material have improved. Q4: What is being done to prevent nuclear material trafficking? A4: Efforts to prevent, detect, deter, and respond to
nuclear material trafficking are wide ranging. The U.S. government has spent close to $1 billion annually under the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to
eliminate the risk of “loose nukes” since the 1990s, and since 2002, U.S. allies have spent a similar amount under the Global Partnership Program. International
conventions such as the Convention for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material have been expanded over time, and countries have agreed to implement UN
Security Council Resolution 1540 to criminalize actions that could give nonstate actors access to weapons of mass destruction–related technologies, material, or
equipment. Internationally, the International Atomic Energy Agency offers assistance to its members to ensure the physical security of nuclear materials and
tracks incidents through its Incident and Trafficking Nuclear Database. Bilaterally, countries cooperate to train border guards and strengthen export controls.
The bottom line is that it is possible to protect against the misuse of nuclear material, but it will require a shared
sense of urgency and purpose in enhancing nuclear security.
Biometric surveillance can solve even if migrants are released into the US, as the information is collected. Woodward
explains
Woodward 1 [Woodward, John D., 2001, "Biometrics: Facing Up to Terrorism," Rand Corporation,
https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP218.html]
some of the terrorists were able to enter the United States using valid
As the criminal investigation of the September 11th attacks appears to demonstrate,
travel documents under their true identities, passing with little difficulty through immigration procedures at U.S.
ports of entry. Once in the country, they patiently continued their planning, preparation, training, and related operational work for months and in some cases years until that fateful day. Once
inside the United States, the terrorists cleverly took advantage of American freedoms to help carry out their
attacks. According to media reports, however, at least three of the suicide attackers were known to U.S. authori7 ✺ ties as suspected terrorists. In late August 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
passed information to the INS to be on the lookout for two men suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. The CIA apparently obtained videotape showing the men, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi,
talking to people implicated in the U.S.S. Cole bombing. The videotape was taken in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. It is not clear when the CIA received it. When the INS checked its database, it found that
a Almihdhar and Alhazmi had successfully passed through INS procedures and had already entered the United States. The CIA asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to find them. But with both men already
was looking for two needles in a haystack. The FBI was still seeking the two when the hijackers struck.
in the United States, the FBI
we need a better way to

Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi are believed to have been hijackers on American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. As the above details illustrate,
identify individuals whom we know or suspect to be terrorists when they attempt to enter the United States. The
use of biometric facial recognition is one way to make such identifications, particularly when U.S. authorities already have a photograph of the
suspected terrorist whom they seek.
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Contention II Economy
Illegal immigrants take low wage jobs, causing poverty
Steven Camarota explained in 2013
Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, September 13, 2023,
https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/9.13.23_camarota_testimony_help_subcommittee_hearing_on_open_borders_and_workforce.pdf, Illegal
Immigration and the U.S. Labor Marke
One of the most important reasons to limit immigration and enforce those limits is to protect the interests of American workers.
There is evidence that
illegal immigrants adversely impact the wages and employment of some American workers. One of the chief
arguments for tolerating illegal immigration is that the low unemployment rate means there are not enough
workers. However, this ignores the dramatic long-term decline in labor force participation, particularly among
working-age, less-educated, U.S.-born men. Those not in the labor force do not show up as unemployed because they are not actively looking
for work. In total, there are some 44 million U.S.-born 16- to 64-year-olds not in the labor force — nearly 10 million more than in 2000. Using large-scale illegal
immigration to fill jobs may please employers, but doing so has allowed policy-makers to largely ignore the extremely troubling decline in participation. Research
shows thefall-off in participation contributes to profound social problems, from crime and welfare dependency to
suicide and drug overdoses. Overview: • The current surge of illegal immigration is unprecedented. Some 2.6 million
inadmissible aliens have been released into the country by the administration since January 2021. There have also been 1.5 million “got-aways” — individuals
observed entering illegally but not stopped. Visa overstays also seem to have hit a record in FY 2022. • We preliminarily estimate that the illegal immigrant
population grew to 12.6 million by May of this year, up 2.4 million since January 2021. Perhaps nine million are now in the labor force. However, additional
research is necessary to confirm these estimates. • All prior research, and the limited data on the current surge, indicate that the overwhelming
majority of illegal immigrants have modest education levels. Based on prior research, some 69 percent of adult illegal immigrants have
no education beyond high school, 13 percent have some college, and 18 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. • Due to their education levels,
they are heavily concentrated in lower-wage, less-skilled jobs such as construction labor, building cleaning and
maintenance, food service and preparation, groundskeeping, retail sales, and food processing. However, the vast majority of workers in
these jobs are still U.S.-born or legal immigrants. • The notion that illegal immigrants only do jobs American’s don’t
want is false. Even in the two dozen occupations where illegal immigrants are 15 percent or more of all the workers, 5.7 million U.S.-born Americans are
employed. • Though often the focus of illegal immigration debate, farmworkers comprise less than 1 percent of the
entire U.S. labor force; and less than 5 percent of all illegal immigrants work is in that relatively small sector. • There
is clear evidence that immigration reduces the wages and employment of some U.S.-born workers, though distinguishing the impact of illegal immigration in
particular is difficult. However, it should be pointed out that lower wages can also result in higher profits for employers or lower prices for consumers. • Illegal
immigration has to be understood in the context of the extremely troubling decades-long decline in labor force
participation among less-educated U.S.-born men, which coincides with the rapid increase in immigration since
the 1960s. • For example, 96 percent of “prime-age” (25 to 54) U.S.-born men with no more than a high school education were in the labor force in 1960,
meaning they were working or at least looking for work. By 2000 it had fallen to 87 percent and by 2023 it was just 82 percent. • Job competition with
immigrants, including illegal immigrants, is not the only reason for this decline. However, immigration, including tolerating large scale illegal immigration, has
allowed society to ignore the decline and the accompanying social pathologies. Introduction The current surge of illegal immigration raises concerns about the
impact on public safety, national security, public coffers, social services, schools, hospitals, and the rule of law. While these things are all certainly important, my
testimony will focus specifically on the impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. labor market. Congress
set limits on legal immigration and
has allocated funds to enforce those limits for good reason. One of these reasons is to protect American workers,
especially those Americans with relatively fewer years of schooling who are most likely to compete with illegal aliens.
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High rates of migration are overwhelming social services and aggravating homelessness. Candice
Owens explained in 2023 that
Caitlin Owens, September 23, 2023,

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/23/housing-crisis-migrant-immigrants-homeless, Migrant
surge makes U.S. housing crisis worse
A surge in new migrants is colliding with the U.S.' housing crisis, and even putting a minor dent in the shelter
problem is costing state and local governments millions. Why it matters: Cities simply don't have enough affordable
homes, enough shelters or enough money to help everyone who needs it, straining scarce resources and leaving
thousands of people out on the street. The big picture: Soaring housing costs and the end of some pandemic-era safety nets have fueled an
affordable housing shortage, causing homelessness to rise in many cities. Homelessness in the U.S. had a record spike from 2022 to
2023, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Now, state and local officials are also scrambling to house thousands of migrants arriving from the border.
What they're saying: "We need more units. We need to confront the broader housing crisis," New York City Comptroller Brad Lander tells Axios in an interview.
"If we can help folks that have been in shelter a long time get housing subsidies, and if we can help asylum seekers get work authorizations ... they won't be
competing for the same units," he adds. Zoom in: New York City is legally required to provide shelter to anyone who requests it. The city was caring for nearly
60,000 migrants and asylum seekers at the beginning of September, according to the comptroller's office. Migrants accounted for more than half
of the city's shelter population, according to a report released this month. It just announced a lease of a World War II-era airfield as an emergency
shelter site. Chicago homeless advocates estimate the city has more than 68,000 unhoused people, in addition to nearly 9,500 migrants. City officials tell Axios
they expect migrant support efforts to cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars this year. Local advocates say that's more than they've ever seen deployed
toward the local homeless population, though a city official told a community meeting this summer that homelessness resources aren't being diverted to aid
migrants. "Chicago's severely underfunded homelessness system has led to fighting for scarce resources," the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says in a
statement released to Axios. "We should not be pitting Black and Brown communities against each other. We must and can do better." Denver is grappling with
more than 1,300 migrants in dedicated shelters, while others have turned to homeless encampments. Caring
for migrants has cost the city more
than $24 million. It has also used federal dollars to bus newcomers elsewhere. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey estimated the state is spending $45
million monthly to shelter unhoused people and migrants. The number of families in state shelters reached a new all-time high of 6,528 last week — nearly half
of them in hotels or motels. Washington, D.C., established an office dedicated to migrants in 2022 in an effort to avoid overwhelming its homeless social
services.
Poverty kills
Oshan Jarrow explained in 2013 that
Oshan Jarow Jul 14, 2023, Poverty is a major public health crisis. Let’s treat it like one,
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23792854/poverty-mortality-study-public-health-antipoverty-america-deaths-
poor-life-expectancy, Vox
“We need a whole new scientific agenda on poverty and mortality,” said David Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California Riverside, whose
recent co-authored study aims to jump-start that agenda by asking just how many Americans die from poverty each year. It’s well established that poverty is bad
for your health. But as a public health issue, the US knows less about the direct link between poverty and death than we know about, say, the link between
smoking and death. Current estimates suggest smoking kills 480,000 Americans per year. Obesity kills 280,000, and drug overdoses claimed 106,000 American
lives in 2021. Together, risk factors and their mortality estimates help motivate public health campaigns and government-funded efforts to save lives. But how
many Americans does poverty actually kill? The question has received little attention compared to other mortality risks, and meanwhile,
poverty remains prevalent across the country. Brady — alongside sociologist Hui Zheng at Ohio State University and Ulrich Kohler, a professor of empirical social
research at the University of Potsdam — published their study in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Their results
find poverty is
America’s fourth-leading risk factor for death, behind only heart disease, cancer, and smoking. A single year of
poverty, defined relatively in the study as having less than 50 percent of the US median household income, is
associated with 183,000 American deaths per year. Being in “cumulative poverty,” or 10 years or more of
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uninterrupted poverty, is associated with 295,000 annual deaths Amelia Karraker, a health scientist administrator at the National
Institute on Aging, explains that research has shown a variety of pathways that connect poverty and mortality. These range from neighborhood amenities and
nutrition down to the impacts of stress on the body: “Being
poor is really stressful, which we know from NIH-supported research
has implications for what’s actually happening in the body at the cellular level, which ultimately impacts health
and mortality,” she said. Crucially, that doesn’t mean you’ll find “poverty” written as the cause on anyone’s death certificate. Risk factors are only
correlations that imply an association but not necessarily causation (although new research found that cash transfers to women in low- and middle-income
countries cut mortality rates by 20 percent). But proving an association is a necessary step toward deciphering whether poverty might be more than an
association. For example, there is an association between the number of Nicolas Cage movies released and the number of people who drown in swimming pools
that year. No one is arguing that we should dissuade Cage from releasing films in order to combat drowning. But there is also an association between cigarette
smoking and lung cancer. Here, we do believe one causes the other, so we do try and dissuade people from smoking to combat lung cancer deaths. Arguing that
poverty is more like the latter elevates the debate from a statistics squabble to one of literal life and death. “We just let all these people die from poverty each
year,” Brady said. “What motivated me to think about it in comparison to homicide or other causes of death in America is that people would have to agree that
poverty is important if it’s actually associated with anywhere near this quantity of death.” Without a number attached to the relationship, presenting poverty as
a serious public health risk falls a little flat. “Poverty and mortality are tightly correlated” isn’t exactly as galvanizing a message as “poverty kills
nearly 200,000 Americans a year.” But the key question is what it means to “die from poverty.” As a social determinant of health, the government already
recognizes a direct line between economic conditions and health outcomes. Physicians are now going a step further, establishing a movement known as
anti-poverty medicine that aims not only to identify poverty as a health risk but develop treatments. Attaching a death toll contributes a new data point —
perhaps even a rallying point — to illuminate the ties between poverty and death, and just maybe, it will motivate a more urgent anti-poverty agenda on the
grounds that it could save lives. Poverty is more than just another mortality risk Measured in relative terms, poverty
in the US is significantly
worse than in similarly wealthy countries. Meanwhile, US citizens face a higher mortality rate at almost every age
than residents of peer countries, and that disparity is growing. Even according to the US Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty
measure (an approach that tries to blend relative methods with absolute ones, while accounting for government programs like SNAP benefits and tax credits),
nearly 26 million Americans remained in poverty in 2021. Brady, Zheng, and Kohler analyzed data from 1997–2019, drawing from the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics and the Cross-National Equivalent File. Since the data ends before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and poverty likely compounded the pandemic’s
death toll, they believe their findings are conservative. In 2019, being in poverty was 10 times more of a mortality risk than murder, 4.7 times more than
firearms, and 2.6 times as deadly as drug overdoses. And poor people die younger than others. Their mortality rates begin diverging from the rest around age 40,
reaching a peak disparity near 70, and converging back with the rest around 90. The study used a Cox model, a type of statistical analysis commonly used in
medical research to isolate the effects of a given variable (often particular drugs, but in this case, poverty) on how long patients survive. But no matter how you
analyze it, singling out annual deaths across an entire country from a fuzzy cause like poverty is a statistical nightmare. It’s difficult to imagine how one could
untangle all the confounding factors — like the reverse effect of how poor health also affects income — to deliver a plausible number. One of the few previous
efforts came from a group of epidemiologists in 2011, who estimated poverty’s death toll at 133,000 per year. And while few prior studies aimed to directly
estimate deaths attributable to social factors, there is a decades-long history of wrangling statistical complexities to frame poverty as an actual cause of death.
Brady cited a famous 1995 paper by sociologists Bruce Link and Jo Phelan, making the case that over and above mere risk factors, social conditions like poverty
should be seen as “fundamental causes of disease” that put you at risk of more proximate risks, like heart disease. Link
and Phelan’s paper argued
that if you break down a fundamental cause of disease into its more tractable causes of death, like breaking the
mortality risks of poverty down into a cocktail of heart disease, lung cancer, and drug overdoses, fundamental
causes like poverty get ousted from the picture. Treating individual risk factors alone leaves the underlying social
condition intact, and it will continue putting people at risk of other risk factors. Rather than tracing all the different pathways
that lead from poverty to mortality and focusing public health-inspired anti-poverty efforts on each one separately, Link and Phelan urged an approach that stays
with poverty. “If we wish to alter the effects of these potent determinants of disease, we must do so by directly intervening in ways that change the social
conditions themselves,” they write. Nearly three decades later, clinicians are putting these ideas into practice. Physicians are now prescribing
anti-poverty as medicine While the use of social determinants of health as a framework is gaining significant traction among physicians, companies,
and even the WHO, Lucy Marcil, a pediatrician and associate director for economic mobility in the Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family at Boston
Medical Center, feels they don’t go far enough. She helped coin the idea of anti-poverty medicine in 2021. She explained that “anti-poverty medicine is one step
further upstream to the root cause. Social determinants of health are important, but getting someone access to a food pantry doesn’t really address why they’re
hungry in the first place.” “I started this work about a decade ago,” Marcil told Vox. “At the time, there was a lot of confusion when I would say that I try to get
more people tax credits because it helps their health. Now it’s pretty well established at most major academic medical centers that trying to alleviate economic
inequities is an important part of trying to promote health.” Putting
a number on poverty’s death count could help build the case
for anti-poverty programs embedded within systems of clinical care (like free tax preparation offered in health care systems that
already have the community’s trust, an initiative Marcil pioneered). “If I’m able to say to a funder or to a health system, ‘Look, it’s been published in a reputable
journal that there are X number of deaths in our country every year due to poverty,’ I have a much stronger case for why they should pay for [anti-poverty]
programs,” she said. But physicians can only go so far upstream of poverty. Even before the study positioned long-term poverty as a greater mortality risk than
obesity or dementia, public health scholars had been arguing that anti-poverty efforts should play a central role in a national agenda for public health. A national
anti-poverty agenda for public health Public health campaigns against poverty face a strange and difficult landscape. One thing Americans seem to dislike more
than poverty is welfare. Although 82 percent of Americans reported dissatisfaction with efforts to reduce poverty and homelessness in a 2021 Gallup poll, only
40 percent in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey felt the government should provide more aid to those in need. Even after President Joe Biden’s temporary
expansion to the child tax credit (CTC) nearly cut child poverty in half and showed no signs of fostering welfare dependence among recipients, critics were
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unmoved. The policy expired at the end of 2021, 3.7 million American children fell back into poverty, and we’ve yet to see the program return. Meanwhile, as
the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson writes, “a typical American baby is about 1.8 times more likely to die in her first year than the average infant from a group of
similarly rich countries,” and child poverty is a major risk factor in all manners of infant mortality. At the federal level, another reason to quantify poverty’s death
toll could be to add mortality estimates to the cost-benefit analyses that groups like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) use to score policies and their
impacts. Telling Americans that the expanded CTC almost single-handedly reduced child poverty by half hasn’t yet proved compelling enough to make the
changes permanent. If the CBO were to include in their cost estimates that the expanded CTC would save a certain number of American lives per year, or
conversely, that letting it expire would cost a certain number of American deaths, maybe the policy discourse would move more urgently. Finding
strategies to help support policy implementation is crucial because, ultimately, treating poverty as a public health
issue will require a stronger welfare state that benefits low-income Americans. “No country in the history of capitalist
democracies has ever accomplished sustainably low poverty without an above-average welfare state,” Brady said. “And so until you get serious about expanding
the welfare state in all its forms, you’re not serious about reducing poverty.” Relative to similarly rich countries, the US has high poverty rates, high mortality
rates, and a confusing welfare state. It has the second largest welfare state in the world if you include things like subsidies for employer-based health insurance,
tax-favored retirement accounts, and homeowner subsidies. These mostly benefit those who are already well-off.
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Con Constructive
My partner and I oppose the resolution that. The United States federal government should substantially expand
its surveillance infrastructure along its southern border.
Our framework is the well-being of humanity
Arizona Central Explains,
Arizona Central, September 24, 2015, Pope Francis Urges Congress to Show Compassion for Immigrants,
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/09/24/pope-francis-urges-congress-show-compas
sion-immigrants/72734356/
Pope Francis delivered lawmakers a message of compassion and understanding for immigrants Thursday as part of
his historic, nearly hour-long speech to joint session of Congress, a bitterly divided body that has grappled with
border-security and immigration-reform issues for a decade. In doing so, the pope appealed to the United States'
time-honored reputation as a nation of immigrants. "We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners,
because most of us were at once foreigners," said Pope Francis, the first-ever leader of the Roman Catholic Church to
address U.S. senators and representatives. "I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you
are also descendants of immigrants." Citing the global refugee crisis as well as immigration to the United States from
Mexico and Central America, the pope, who was often interrupted by applause, reminded lawmakers of the Golden
Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." He also told the joint session on Capitol Hill that
immigrants are looking for a better life for themselves and their loved ones, which is the same that anyone would
want for their children. "We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing
their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation," the pope said. "To
respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal. We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays, to
discard whatever proves troublesome." The Golden Rule guides in "a clear direction," he said. "Let us treat others
with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated," Pope Francis said. "Let us seek for
others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be
helped ourselves.
"In a word, if we want security, let us give security," he continued. "If we want life, let us give life. If we want
opportunities, let us provide opportunities."
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Contention I. Rights Deprivation
Surveillance at the border lays the foundation for surveillance globally and collapses asylum
under international law. Paul Molar explains that
Petra Molnar is an anthropologist and attorney focused on human rights and migration, 7-11, 24, Texas Observor,
‘TECH DOESN’T JUST STAY AT THE BORDER’: PETRA MOLNAR ON SURVEILLANCE’S LONG REACH,
https://www.texasobserver.org/border-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-tech/
A lot of this technology is first developed and deployed for border purposes, normalized and then repurposed in
other spaces. There’s also surveillance that happens inland, of course. There’s all sorts of license plate reader
technology, different types of facial recognition tools, carceral technologies, that are used both in the criminal justice
system and in the immigration detention system. It is this kind of surveillance dragnet that extends further and
further inland and ensnares entire communities.
Could you talk a little bit about how surveillance tech plays a role in the so-called externalization of borders from the
Global North to the Global South? How does that apply at the U.S.-Mexico border?
Externalization is a really important piece to this puzzle, too. This is the phenomenon where the border stops being
a physical location, and then it is extended further, kind of disaggregated from its actual physical location—not
only vertically into the skies through drones and surveillance but also horizontally. The U.S. has for years been
pushing its border farther and farther south. The whole logic behind this right is that if a country can prevent
people from even reaching its territory, then the job is done, right? If the whole point is to strengthen borders or
close the borders, then externalization does that job for you because people can’t even arrive in your territory.
The tension here is a lot of Western states like to present themselves as being very like human rights forward.
They are the ones who ratified and signed all the agreements like the Refugee Convention. But in order for that to
work, the international refugee protection regime has to allow for people to be able to leave their country and
arrive in a country of refuge where they can then claim asylum. If you close the border and then you push the
border away to make it even more difficult for people to come, that actually infringes on this fundamentally
protected right to asylum. That is illegal under international refugee law. The U.S. is a signatory to the Refugee
Convention, and closing a border and preventing people from seeking asylum is in direct contravention of these
principles and laws that supposedly the U.S. holds.
We need to uplold the international legal agreements we’ve made, including those involving
migrants, if we are going to survive. Will Draper explains that
John William Draper 22, Reference Librarian (Retired), Biddle Law Library, University of Pennsylvania, Carey Law
School, “Why Aim Law Toward Human Survival,” SSRN Scholarly Paper, ID 4034781, Social Science Research Network,
02/14/2022, papers.ssrn.com, doi:10.2139/ssrn.4034781 I. RISKS TO HUMAN SURVIVAL Is it reasonable to believe that humanity is
headed toward collapse? As observed by social and political philosopher, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, “We are living today in the shadow cast by the
prospect of catastrophes that, separately or in combination, threaten to bring about the disappearance of the human race
from earth.”4 Briefly, the risks humanity faces are a combination of too much consumption, too much pollution, and too large a human population.5 Any one of these problems
can be sufficient to be lethal to a large group of humans, even, ultimately, the largest group. This Part is not background material but a statement of the scope and depth
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of humanity’s legal problem. We face many risks in many categories. Although we may not know all the significant risks or
even all the categories, science provides easy windows into several, including insufficient food supply, fresh-water
scarcity in a rising number of locales, pandemics, massive die-offs of other species upon which we depend, and the exacerbating factor
of climate change. We begin with consumption. A. Consumption Madison Avenue’s marketers have long worked to create demand. 6 As a consequence,
we now consume too much.7 Our impact is measured by an ecological footprint, a calculation of our consumption. 8 The Global Footprint Network’s website
shows that the U.S. ecological footprint ranks seventh in the world (behind six tiny countries) at 8.1 hectares per person.9 Per person, we use over 4.7 times the
resources generated by the planet.10 We are good consumers. Madison Avenue has done its job well. The 2020 Living Planet Report from WWF (formerly the
World Wildlife Federation) and the Zoological Society of London tells the resulting story of a human footprint that has long outstripped the Earth’s capacity for
regeneration.11 With a rapidly rising global population, humanity is in an increasing bind to produce enough food. We have two connected problems. First,
“[b]iodiversity loss threatens food security and urgent action is needed to address the loss of the biodiversity that feeds the world.”12 Secondly, “[W]here and
how we produce food is one of the biggest human-caused threats to nature and our ecosystems, making the transformation of our global food system more
important than ever.”13 Our increasing demand for food is merely one of the many problems of humanity’s overconsumption.14 We abuse the land to create
more food.15 We are wasteful.16 And we have modified our diets to use our supply of available vegetable oils and meat.17 Unfortunately, these actions cause
additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Meanwhile, “[c]hanges in consumption patterns have contributed to about two billion adults now being overweight
or obese.”18 Nevertheless, hunger remains widespread.19 At the same time, we must use less water to create food. To adapt, we need to change our food
supply. For the unwilling, only failing to adapt could be worse. In a drought, crops can fail. Whencrops fail repeatedly, a civilization can
collapse.20 Like it or not, in this globalized world we are all part of one enormous human civilization. If we destabilize ourselves with extreme
droughts, resultant migrations increase humanity’s risk of failure. Excessive consumption can destroy resources rather than allow
regeneration (of e.g., soils or fisheries) needed for the longer term. Our use of lands and waters destroys natural habitats,21 destroys wild food sources,22 harms
biodiversity,23 and causes soil damage and erosion.24 Unfortunately, through neo-classical economic theory, consumption growth is viewed positively.
Satisfaction is all about the money. Maximum profit or income is the goal, even a duty, without regard to externalities.25 Some externalities then harm people
with rights.26 Materialism and immorality are merely symptoms of self-interest27 built into the system’s structures, behavior, and training (i.e., advertising) to
support it all by imploring us to use more and by measuring our behavior. The result is our “throwaway society.”28 Why do we overconsume? John McCollough’s
empirical study points to convenience and conspicuous consumption, 29 interests that cannot possibly justify the taking of life.30 Convenience means that it is
often cheaper to replace something than to fix it. Time is money; environmental damage is a mere externality that either has not been factored into our
economic decision-making (the problem of social cost) or is merely compensated with money.31 Conspicuous consumption includes fashion obsolescence. 32
Selling more is more profitable, and together with planned obsolescence, profit maximization plays a role in our drive to consume. This choice has been
encouraged by the short-term profit motive of the next quarterly report.33 We consume all kinds of things, even land. Consider agriculture. We have long
transformed wild habitats to other uses. As our global population approaches 8 billion34 and rises rapidly,35 we have gone too far. The resulting extinction
crisis36 affects the entirety of nature. All manner of bees, birds, trees, and other fauna and flora need a safe and healthy place to
live and to support human life. But the biosphere of the Earth, within which humanity developed, 37 is dying. For example, species of
amphibians, especially frogs — “nature’s canary in the mine”38 — have long been dying off.39 Not just a few. Species of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish,
invertebrates, and plants are disappearing.40 A recent UN report compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries stresses that natural resources are declining
at rates unmatched in human history and that the rate of extinction is increasing.41 As extinctions multiply, humanity can foreseeably be
caught in an extinction avalanche.42 We head toward failure. The human activities at the root of this crisis are both direct and indirect. Direct
activities include the clearing of forest and other wild lands for housing, roads, and food production. Indirect habitat destruction occurs through climate change.
Although we will revisit climate change, here we see its impact on habitats: “Global warming has led to shifts of climate zones in many world regions, including
expansion of arid climate zones and contraction of polar climate zones. As a consequence, many plant and animal species have experienced changes in their
ranges, abundances, and shifts in their seasonal activities.”43 Changes in ranges and behavior may suffice for some species; others (e.g., trees) are unlikely to be
able to migrate successfully. As climate change increases deserts and non-arable lands,44 humanity in turn clears forest to replace lost food production.
Destruction of forests, especially rainforests, exacerbates climate change by reducing carbon sinks and oxygen production. Land degradation from climate
change is part of a vicious circle. 45 Failure to modulate the impacts of climate change with careful land management will cause the impacts to spiral upward
through a feedback loop of increasing erosion of our life support system.46 Forests
wither from extreme weather events,47 from infestation of
introduced species,48 from acid rain,49 and from land conversion to agricultural and other uses.50 In connection with this loss, biodiversity
is plunging.51 As part of a larger statement on climate change, a group of over 11,000 scientists says, “We need to quickly curtail habitat and biodiversity loss …,
protecting the remaining primary and intact forests, especially those with high carbon stores and other forests with the capacity to rapidly sequester carbon
(proforestation), while increasing reforestation and afforestation where appropriate at enormous scales.”52 As we develop or open human access to more lands,
including forest lands, humanity is doing the opposite. Wild habitats and the species that live in them are on course to fall. We are destroying our commons.53
According to Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson, “Unless humanity learns a great deal more about global biodiversity and moves quickly to protect it, we will soon lose
most of the species composing life on Earth.”54 Remember the clean water each of us needs to live. We memorialized that need with the Clean Water Act of
1972. 55 Use and efficiency vary by how much we pay.56 We need clean water for more than drink. Food production uses most of our water.57 But water
shortages over vast areas of land make food production increasingly difficult. 58 Excessive consumption, encouraged by a variety of systems and incentives, can
be proven rational,59 but consumption itself is not the only problem. The inefficiencies of production, processing, and distribution, some of them inherent, add
to our waste.60 What is thrown away is not “consumed” per se. Excessive consumption generates a lot of waste, all forms of gaseous, solid, and liquid waste.61
Our problem with too much consumption is tied to our problem with too much pollution, which we will discuss next. Fortunately, if we consume less, we will
also pollute less. B. Pollution Pollution comes in many forms. We pollute our water and air. We will consider each briefly. Pollution sounds bad, but it is
merely part of life as each of us generates pollution daily for Earth to absorb and process.62 Of course, the more of us there are, the more waste our planet must
process. Water pollution, long treated as a local matter;63 is also a national problem.64 It has become a global matter.65 Our oceans are full of plastic which
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harms sea life and collects in massive garbage patches or gyres.66 River deltas are dead zones from agricultural runoff.67 Some dead zones are as large
as a US state.68 They have existed for decades as the EPA has not regulated agricultural pollution.69 If humanity, through feeding itself or by any other endeavor,
ruins its waters and the life that those waters support, how will we live? The discharge of toxins can come from industrial activity. For example, the burning of
coal releases significant amounts of mercury into the air.70 Much of that mercury condenses into water, either directly into an ocean or by collecting there from
freshwater runoff. Sea life absorbs it, and the toxin concentrates as it works its way up the food chain. Thus, Inuit, who live far from industrial pollution sources,
suffer serious health effects.71 Ocean pollution ranges from barrels of toxic sludge72 to denim particles from washing machine discharges73 to tiny plastic beads
(nurdles).74 More insidiously, plastics, blowing into our lungs at the beach, 75 may threaten one of humanity’s prime sources of oxygen.76 All forms of
freshwater pollution, from mine tailings77 to agricultural runoff78 to condensed mercury (from forest fires and air pollution)79 to plastic bottles and other
debris80 find that oceans are inevitably downstream. Entire books are written on aspects of water pollution. The same goes for air pollution. My point here is
that it is all deadly, especially as it accumulates over increasing time frames, and the risks combine but also have synergies. Risk is not just a matter of potential.
People are dying.81 We see this in rates of cancer,82 lung disease,83 and neurological disorders.84 Air pollution is composed of particulates and gasses.
Historically, government regulated particulates first,85 probably because we could see them. Downwind was long the answer to emission problems. Building a
taller smokestack moved smoke from the immediate area of the plant.86 However, current technology allows us to trace plumes of smoke around the globe.87
Pollution is now global. There is no escaping it. Even for particulates now, everyone is downwind. There is a clear linkage between pollution and child
mortality.88 Neither adulthood nor distance provide immunity.89 Thus, we all bear some risk. Gas pollution can come from toxic chemicals and even from inert
gasses in quantities sufficient to overwhelm Earth’s absorptive capacities. GHGs represent a global, not just local, challenge. We must stop them globally as well
as locally. As we cannot see GHGs, it has been easier to ignore them. Carbon dioxide and methane are the most pernicious GHGs; they cause climate change. 90
We will return to climate change shortly. Climate change is a damage multiplier, adding periods of increasingly extreme heat, leading to long-term sea-level rise,
to enhanced dangerous storm activity, and to hundreds of millions of migrants seeking escape from the effects of those changes. This brings us to the matter of
human population. C. Population Both consumption and pollution depend, to some degree, on population. Our global population is approaching 8 billion, but
the long-term capacity of the planet has been estimated to be about five billion.91 As the seas rise and the climate scorches productive lands, one should expect
the Earth’s carrying capacity to drop by hundreds of millions. Feeding eight billion is already damaging our remaining ecosystems.92 The
biodiversity into which our species was born is disappearing.93 Problematically, our food systems rely on that biodiversity.94 With a rising population (fast in
some places), we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of needing to explore fair and equitable longer-term approaches to global population control and
even reduction. At the same time, we need to protect the rights to life and health95 for all. Humanity is in a bind, and the size of our population is a major part
of the problem. Our procreational liberties and incentives, world-over, add to the risk of early collapse and death for all of us. As biologist Wilson
puts it, “we must really slow down. Reproduction is obviously necessary, but it is a bad idea, as Pope Francis I has pointed out, to continue multiplying like
rabbits.”96 Wilson adds that demographic projections show the human population rising “to about eleven billion or slightly more before the end of the century,
thereafter peak, and begin to subside.”97 The impact of 11 billion humans on planet Earth is a frightening prospect. We lack natural resources to support the
current population, let alone another three and a half billion. Our population is already a major exacerbating factor in meeting our need to live on a healthy and
relatively safe planet.98 We should quantify our impact. In 2016, Edward O. Wilson reported, “The rate of extinction of species and races is conservatively
estimated to be 877 times above that prevailing before the origin of humanity (the latter rate is one extinction every three million years).”99 Extinctions from the
dodo to the Tasmanian tiger to the Pyrean ibex relate to human activity.100 Our impact on other species matters: If we kill all the main oxygen makers, what will
we breathe? Other species include both plants and animals. Native plants and animals are often displaced by introduced101 species or as habitat gets put to
“productive” use, whether that use be housing, agriculture, or industry. The pressures of an expanding human global population—and its footprint—are
eliminating and overusing102 wild spaces. This increases the risk that we may remove one species too many. There are many “little” species that have been
compared to the rivets holding together an airplane. No single rivet is crucial. One can remove a rivet. And another. But soon the airplane will not hold
together.103 The same goes for the huge collection of species on which we depend, from pollinators to fungi, or the species upon which they depend. We need
crops to be pollinated, and we need compost to rot. The trouble here is that we have no idea of the damage we are doing to our very own life support
system.104 Growing extinctions represent an existential threat.105 Human-caused habitat destruction is leading to mass extinctions that increase significant risk
to humanity. According to Professor Wilson, there are almost countless ways we are unwittingly destroying the millions of species that benefit humanity directly
or indirectly, regardless of “whatever might be their present or future beneficent roles. The human impact is largely due to the excess of the many quotidian
activities we perform just to get on with our personal lives. Those activities have made us the most destructive species in the history of life.”106 As a result, he
says, “[A]ll available evidence points to the same two conclusions. First, the Sixth Extinction is underway; and second, human activity is its driving force.”107 We
are systematically exterminating the other species on this planet. This concern for other species leads back to our own. In the process of completing our
dominion over the planet, we are putting our own species at significant risk. As Ronald Dworkin put it, Our concern for the preservation of animal species
reaches its most dramatic and intense form, of course, in the case of one particular species: our own. It is an inarticulate, unchallenged, almost unnoticed, but
nevertheless absolute premise of our political and economic planning that the human race must survive and prosper.108 Our notions of prosperity threaten our
survival. This comes into stark view when we consider our own globalization. A vast and foundational part of global health security is global food security.
Without food and the water upon which it depends, we have no way to provide for the hungry billions. Unfortunately, our actions are already placing humanity’s
food supply at risk. 109 Our ability to feed five billion, let alone the nearly eight billion already on Earth, is slipping away. There is more to health security than
food. COVID-19 makes that clear. Our global population is high, but it is also interconnected. We currently lack an effective system to control or limit global
interconnections and the significant risks that go with them. This has special application with introduced species, whether plants, insects, mollusks, or viruses.
There are likely entire categories of risks which we have not yet identified, let alone studied and solved, both on paper and in the real world. The build-out of a
system can enable success. The success of South Korea’s response to COVID-19 in spring 2020 demonstrates the importance of a system of study, preparation,
and cooperation. We have discussed consumption, pollution, and population. Each or a combination bears risks to humanity, both foreseeable and significant.
We move to another category of significant global risk, systemic risk. D. Systemic Risks Humanity
builds systems ranging from systems of
government to electrical systems to economic systems. As humanity has grown, so have our systems. As they become bigger, faster, more
powerful and complex, systems are subject to bigger, faster, more powerful and complex failures.110 These risks are both foreseeable
and significant.111 As law professor J.B. Ruhl points out, “[A]lthough we often compartmentalize social, ecological, and technological systems
as distinct, it is becoming difficult to disaggregate them in operation, as automated online systems increasingly run infrastructure
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systems, expanding infrastructure systems increasingly degrade ecological systems, and degraded ecological systems diminish the resilience of human social and
economic systems.”112 Thus, humanity is now subject to global systemic risk.113 Our civilizations and systems all rely on natural systems,
including Earth’s biodiversity and its climate. Failure of such enormous and complex ecological systems can trigger cascade failure in human systems.114 This
section examines natural systems at risk of cascade failure from excessive consumption, pollution, and population. They are quickly eroding. Governing the risks
of such failures is both a scientific and a policy challenge.115 Professor Ruhl explains: “The science of cascade failures in social, ecological, and technological
systems seeks to understand their causes and behavior and is developing metrics and principles for describing systemic risk, failure propagation, and network
resilience.”116 Governments can then “benefit from the techniques and strategies cascade failure science is exploring for modeling, monitoring, event
prediction, and event prevention, response, and recovery.”117 Before one can solve a problem, one needs to identify it. The problem of systemic risk lies not in
identifying initial triggers so much as locating the overall systemic or structural cause. While the trigger of an initial failure event may seem small and random in
isolation, 118 the exact elements vary with operating conditions, meaning that the same event in the same system will not always start a cascade failure.119
Earth has an interdependent infrastructure,120 and we need to beware foreseeable failures. Next, we visit two categories of significant systemic risks, failure of
the biodiversity of Earth’s life support system and failure of our climate system. 1. Failure of Earth’s Life Support System The world that we grew up in is
dying. Once it is gone, we are entirely on our own, without a life support system or a parachute.121 According to philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, the systemic
risks we face represent a kind of evil. 122 We seem to be thoughtlessly wed to our own systemic destruction. But we cannot use self-interest as a tool to attack
this systemic evil due to the political impotence of goodness.123 Many of us want to believe that science and technology will bail us out of this “moral
disaster,”124 but this is a fatal error. 125 We are on a suicidal path that will kill the biodiversity that supports life on this planet. We need to change the aim of
our systems to achieve a different result. If we can make the economic transition to a different worldview according to Professor Wilson, “[t]he biosphere and
the ten million species that compose it will no longer be treated as a commodity, but as something vastly more important—a mysterious entity still beyond the
boundaries of our imagination yet vital to long-term human existence.”126 Wilson says Earth’s life support system remains at risk: “We and the rest of life with
us are in the middle of a bottleneck of rising population, shrinking resources, and disappearing species. As its stewards, we need to think of our species as being
in a race to save the living environment.”127 The system can fail. Wilson suggests a way to avoid that risk: “The logical primary goal is to make it through the
bottleneck to a better, less perilous existence while carrying through as much of the rest of life as possible.”128 The collapse of Earth’s biodiversity is not the only
global systemic risk humanity faces. We were already eradicating biodiversity, but now changes in climate systems are enhancing the eradication, risks, and
probabilities. 2. Systemic Climate Risk The Earth’s climate is an enormous natural system, a system of systems. The climate system directly affects our weather
and our well-being. Our vision of the future seems obscured by the systemic changes we have already wrought. However, as we cannot know the future, we
cannot know how much worse it will get. But we can extrapolate from the past, and we can see the trends. Day after day, year after year, Earth is warming. Many
snow-capped mountains are now bare. Glaciers are receding or gone. Climate change discussions are often about the number of degrees Celsius global mean
surface (land and ocean) temperature (GMST) relative to pre-industrial levels. 129 David Wallace-Wells notes how easy it is to trivialize the differences between
such numbers as two, three, four, or five. We lack a frame of reference for risks with these kinds of thresholds, “but as with world wars or recurrences of cancer,
you don’t want to see even one.”130 We are already rising past 1.2 degrees GMST of warming.131 Climate change is another multiplier, beyond population,
affecting both risk and damage. GHGs trap the planet’s heat which then affects weather patterns. No single storm can be attributed to global warming; according
to Wallace-Wells, they all are.132 We have unleashed a growing global risk: “Climate change isn’t something happening here or there but everywhere, and all at
once. And unless we choose to halt it, it will never stop.”133 Such changes in weather patterns bring “climate cascades,” some of which are local, and some of
which are global.134 Climate cascades are especially likely to occur through the operation of “feedback loops,” which reinforce the operation, erosion, and
destruction of climate change. 135 Those cascades have a multiplier effect. When polar icecaps melt, sea level rise will flood Miami, Dhaka, Shanghai, Hong
Kong, and a hundred other cities around the world.136 Many huge risks are well known. What is the holdup? Why is humanity not reducing the risk? Many are
caught by our innate self-interest enhanced by a neo-classical economic philosophy that is baked into the global market system. That philosophy espouses profit
or wealth maximization as an ideal—on one side. a. The Behavioral Challenge An alternative view, on the other side, calls for system-level actions and changes to
entrenched systems. Until systems change, some may have little reason to change behavior. When it comes to acting on climate change, we are controlled by
such near-term and normal concerns as jobs and health. Operating outside the system bears significant risks. Thus, while the climate situation deteriorates,
many of us wait in hope of a systemic change. The human system requires modification. 137 We know what to do, but lack the means. We face global problems
requiring global changes in behavior. But governmental systems are not set up to deal with these kinds of problems. Nevertheless, we must change global
behavior now. We have one last chance to avoid climate disaster.138 That chance will require “unprecedented global cooperation.”139 Like a pandemic, if
climate change gets out of control, we are in big trouble. How we treat climate change in the law depends on how we view its probabilistic causation.140 If we
see a probability that warming is a natural and random occurrence, we tend to favor inaction. While those who see the probability that climate change is
anthropogenically-caused tend to want to treat that probabilistic causation as an urgent legal problem. By necessity we are using notions of probabilistic
causation to call for law. Further, we will likely need to use calculations of probabilistic causation to build the law and the rules of a protective response. Science
has an answer about which view to take. It says that the odds are overwhelming that humanity has caused the warming of the Earth and the ensuing climate
changes. We can only operate in this realm based on prediction of future classes of effects that fall more into the areas of social science and medical
research.141 Failing to take the probabilities of causation into account in law- and rule-making is “deeply problematic.”142 Carbon is one of the primary causes
of climate change. But climate change is caused by humans, and human activity on the ground has long released excessive amounts of carbon.143 How we live
makes a difference. We cook food. We heat and cool our homes. Most of us live in cities.144 We travel by car and by airplane. Many of us consume meat and
dairy. We see the result on land: “Since the pre-industrial period, the land surface air temperature has risen nearly twice as much as the global average
temperature.”145 Now let us return to food, this time to see how climate change affects what we eat. b. Food “Climate change exacerbates land
degradation.”146 Land degradation adversely affects production. As more land degrades, we get less food. The carbon and its heat not only reduce food
production, higher levels of CO2 also harm food quality. Plants are bigger now but less nutritious.147 As Wallace-Wells says, “Everything is becoming more like
junk food.” Between 1950 and 2004, protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin C have declined in plants by as much as a third. “Even the protein content of bee pollen
has dropped by a third.”148 Researchers looking at the effect on one crop, rice, found that “carbon emissions could imperil the health of 600 million people.”149
The bottom line for food: there will be more of us, there will be less food, the food will be less nutritious, and we will be hungrier. Climate change impacts the
land itself. Some areas will be more scorched. 150 Some are already affected; consider the Middle East. 151 This impact on land harms the inhabitants. Those
living in degraded or desertified areas are increasingly impacted by climate change.152 When impacts worsen, billions will be forced to move in search of a new
place to reside. 153 As the acreage of temperate land shrinks and the number of displaced people rises, another emergency looms. c. Migration The migration
problem is far greater than several million Americans. In 2018, the World Bank offered a 2050 estimate of 143 million just in subSaharan Africa, South Asia, and
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Latin America.154 “For every fraction of a degree that temperatures increase, these problems will worsen. This is not fearmongering; this is science.”155 The
UN’s International Organization for Migration has projected as many as a billion climate migrants by 2050. 156 What will it be like 50 years from now? What will
our children face? By 2070, up to three billion humans will migrate due to extreme temperatures.157 That does not count migration forced by sea level rise. Are
we going to relocate New York City, most of Florida and much of New Jersey? To where? With rising sea levels, there will be fewer and fewer “wheres” to go to
and increasing demand for food supplies when there is less land to produce the food. Projections say these concerns will need to be addressed even if we make
immediate significant climate progress. Optimists look for better outcomes with fewer people affected. In the analysis of David Wallace-Wells, “the optimists
have never, in the halfcentury of climate anxiety we’ve already endured, been right.”158 d. Our Global Health Emergency However, humanity itself is not the
only system at risk. Our bodies are systems. For example, episodes of great rainfall, increasingly common with climate change, harm our health: “Historically, in
the United States, more than two-thirds of outbreaks of waterborne disease—illnesses smuggled into humans through algae and bacteria that can produce
gastro-intestinal problems—were preceded by unusually intense rainfall, disrupting local water supplies.”159 Those impacts on our health go beyond the
temporary to include lifetime lost earnings. 160 Lost earnings only begin to tell the story. Even if, as neo-classical economists, we focus on the money, we still
have a problem: “Global gross domestic product could plunge by nearly a quarter by the end of the century because of the effects of climate change.”161 That is
mild compared to the physical emergency. There is a physical emergency: “[O]ver 11,000 climate scientists recently warned, clearly and unequivocally that
planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”162 We have known about warming for decades.163 Yet suddenly we realize that not only is our only home on
fire,164 it is burning faster than we imagined. To save anything, now is the time. Humanity must act on this type and degree of risk now. We must address
foreseeable and significant risks of systemic failure, whether concrete, diffuse, 165 or cascading. We find ourselves frozen, able only to hope. We see the fires.
And we know more warming is coming due to protracted global processes. But change is hard: “if the next 30 years of industrial activity trace the same arc
upward as the last 30 years have, whole regions will become unlivable by any standard we have today as soon as the end of the century.”166 According to
Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson, our planet is in a fight for its life.167 We have made the unthinkable the foreseeable,168 then the probable. When warming reaches
its full reality, we will likely be gone. We would like to think that the problem will go away if we can only control our carbon emissions. If only climate change
were so simple. Unfortunately, there are multiple climate emission gasses. e. Methane Consider another GHG: methane. In 2016, Harvard researchers
discovered that methane represents a much greater percentage of warming gas than was previously calculated.169 Hundred-year emissions were used rather
than measuring the accumulation of total warming gases over time in the atmosphere. According to law professor Steven Ferrey, “The impact of short-lived
chemicals, particularly methane, the second element altering climate, has been miscalculated as if time and intensity do not matter.”170 Methane traps three to
four times as much heat as previously estimated.171 Recalculations172 provide one breathtaking conclusion: We are out of time. We must act. Natural gas, the
recent solution to our energy problems, is largely methane and natural gas leakage is a significant source of climate methane. A 50% global increase in natural
gas demand by 2040 is predicted.173 And even if (unrealistically) none of that methane leaks, a big problem remains: “The [International Energy Agency]
forecasts that abundant use of gas could raise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 650 parts per million causing temperature to rise 3.5 degrees Celsius, which
is more than many experts believe is tolerable for the health of the Planet.”174 Thus, even by solving our coal problem through conversion to natural gas, we will
not have solved the carbon and methane problems. Methane is far more dangerous to humanity than carbon.175 We miscalculated and under-estimated the
role of the second-most prevalent GHG in warming. 176 We leak more methane than ever, 177 and we continue to build out methane (and leakage)
infrastructure.178 Continued fracking will make it nearly impossible for the United States to reach its promised 26-28% reduction goal from 2005 levels.179 We
now share our extraction technology (fracking) with other countries.180 Yet there is no U.S. or global legal structure or regulation to even encourage methane
recovery.181 f. Global Problems and Law Professor Ferrey observes the real global problem of carbon, methane and other GHGs: “Warming molecules released
anywhere on the Planet, warm the entire world, not just the immediate space where they are released.”182 As methane warms the entire planet, we are all at
risk from any methane emissions. With global warming, humanity has encountered local causes with lethal global effects. We need global law to
protect us. There have been efforts at international cooperation, but the results are thin: “The Kyoto Protocol achieved, practically,
nothing; in the twenty years since, despite all of our climate advocacy and legislation and progress on green energy, we have produced more emissions than in
twenty years before.”183 The Paris Agreement was a wonderful step forward,184 but there remains no legal or regulatory system to ensure that goals become
reality. A single-use piece of international law, like a climate treaty, works only for one problem and does not adapt well to changing
conditions—as would be more likely for regulation. The fact that we were able to leave the Paris Accord185 demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the limited
approach. We in the United States cannot stand alone,186 particularly for an issue with this kind of risk to all our rights. The rest of
our world has waited for us. We, humanity, must pull together to avoid a collapse of trust.187
Gur explains that surveillance technologies lead to dehumanization and a loss of dignity and
privacy
Ufuk Gür, explains in 2024, Ufuk Gur, Postdoctoral Researcher at TU Delft, February 7, 2024, Dehumanization and
AI: The Real Risks Beyond Terminator,
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dehumanization-ai-real-risks-beyond-terminators-ufuk-g%C3%BCr-ph-d--olbnf/
February 7, 2024 The association of AI risks with the dehumanization of human beings rather than the scenario of
robots taking over the world is due to a combination of factors rooted in practical, ethical, and sociological
considerations. The development and integration of AI into society are currently more focused on applications that
involve decision-making processes, social media algorithms, surveillance, and automation of jobs. These applications
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can lead to concerns about dehumanization, as they affect how people are perceived, interact with each other, and
find their place in the workforce. The idea of robots taking over the world, often depicted in science fiction, seems
less immediate or realistic in comparison to the tangible impacts of AI technologies that we are witnessing today. AI's
impact on dehumanization touches on several ethical and social concerns, including privacy, autonomy, and bias. For
example, AI systems can infringe on privacy through mass surveillance, undermine autonomy through manipulation
or predictive policing, and perpetuate or even exacerbate biases against certain groups of people. These issues
directly affect the fabric of society and individual human dignity, raising alarms about the dehumanization of
individuals and groups. Automation and AI have the potential to significantly disrupt job markets, leading to
unemployment or underemployment for certain sectors. This economic impact can devalue human labor and skills,
leading to a sense of uselessness or irrelevance among affected individuals. The fear is not just about losing jobs to
robots but about the broader implications for human worth and identity in a world where machines can perform
many tasks better and more efficiently than humans. AI technologies can concentrate power in the hands of those
who control them, leading to potential abuses of power and further dehumanization of those subjected to these
technologies. Concerns about surveillance capitalism and the role of big tech companies in shaping public discourse
and privacy are examples of how AI can impact human dignity and autonomy. The integration of AI into daily life
raises questions about what it means to be human. As machines become more capable of performing tasks that
were once thought to require human intelligence, creativity, or empathy, there is a concern that the unique value of
human experiences and contributions may be undermined or overlooked. While the notion of robots or AI taking
over the world captures the imagination and highlights extreme risks associated with uncontrolled AI development,
the more immediate and pressing concerns relate to how AI is reshaping human interactions, societal norms, and
individual identities today. These concerns are grounded in current realities and have far-reaching implications for
human dignity, rights, and the structure of societies, making them central to discussions about AI risks.
Haggerty explains that
Haggerty, 2015
Kevin D. Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta, “What’s Wrong with Privacy
Protections?” in A World Without Privacy: What Law Can and Should Do? Edited by Austin Sarat p. 230
emphasis on the threat of authoritarian forms of rule inherent in populations open to detailed
Still others will say I am being alarmist. My
institutional scrutiny will be portrayed as overblown and over dramatic, suggesting I veer towards the lunatic fringe of unhinged conspiracy
theorists.66 But one does not have to believe secret forces are operating behind the scenes to recognize that our declining
private realm presents alarming dangers. Someone as conservative and deeply embedded in the security establishment as William Binney –
a former NSA senior executive – says the security surveillance infrastructure he helped build now puts us on the
verge of “turnkey totalitarianism.”67 The contemporary expansion of surveillance, where monitoring becomes an ever-more routine
part of our lives, represents a tremendous shift in the balance of power between citizens and organizations. Perhaps the
greatest danger of this situation is how our existing surveillance practices can be turned to oppressive uses. From this point forward
our expanding surveillance infrastructure stands as a resource to be inherited by future generations of politicians, corporate
actors, or even messianic leaders. Given sufficient political will this surveillance infrastructure can be re-purposed to monitor –
in unparalleled detail – people who some might see as undesirable due to their political opinions, religion, skin color, gender,
birthplace, physical abilities, medical history, or any number of an almost limitless list of factors used to pit people against
one another. The twentieth century provides notorious examples of such repressive uses of surveillance. Crucially,
those tyrannical states exercised fine-grained political control by relying on surveillance infrastructures that today seem
laughably rudimentary, comprised as they were of paper files, index cards, and elementary telephone tapping.68 It is no more alarmist to
acknowledge such risks are germane to our own societies than it is to recognize the future will see wars, terrorist attacks,
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or environmental disasters – events that could themselves prompt surveillance structures to be re-calibrated towards more
coercive ends. Those who think this massive surveillance infrastructure will not, in the fullness of time, be turned to
repressive purposes are either innocent as to the realities of power, or whistling past a graveyard. But one does not have to dwell on the most
extreme possibilities to be unnerved by how enhanced surveillance capabilities invest tremendous powers in organizations. Surveillance capacity gives
organizations unprecedented abilities to manipulate human behaviors, desires, and subjectivities towards
organizational ends – ends that are too often focused on profit, personal aggrandizement, and institutional self-interest rather
than human betterment.
Contention II. Humanitarianism
The UN Human Refugee Agency noted in 2023 that,
UNHCCR, October 10, 2023, Central America Displacement Crisis Explained,

https://www.unrefugees.org/news/central-america-displacement-crisis-explained/
Gang violence, extortion, persecution, poverty and food insecurity continue to force hundreds of thousands of
people from Central America to flee their homes in search of safety. By the end of 2022, the number of asylum-seekers and refugees
worldwide from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras reached 665,200 and more than 318,600 have been internally displaced. Here’s What You Need to Know:
1. Why are people fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? 2. Which countries are welcoming refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? 3. How
are children, women and LGBTI people impacted by this crisis? 4. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the crisis? 5. What is UNHCR doing to help people
fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? Why are people fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? Widespread
violence and organized
crime, compounded with the region’s socio-economic instability and poverty, are the main drivers for people to flee.
The increasing presence of drug cartels and gangs -called maras- threatens the lives of thousands of people in the region
who are forced to flee their homes to ensure their own safety and protect their families from violence, extortion, forced gang recruitment and sexual and
gender-based violence (SGBV).
Those who flee - many of whom are women and children - undertake perilous journeys, just
to find a safe place to live. Since 2018, political turmoil and persecution has also forced more than 200,000 people to flee
persecution and human rights abuses, the vast majority – 150,000 — into neighboring Costa Rica. People fleeing Central America Which countries are welcoming
refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? Most of the people fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras seek refuge in neighboring
countries, such as Panama, Costa Rica, Belize and Mexico. In 2017, these countries - along with Guatemala and Honduras – implemented an integrated Action
Plan (MIRPS) to strengthen protection and promote durable solutions for those forcibly displaced across the region. Yet the growing numbers of people seeking
safety in recent years has overstretched the capacities of host countries and strained services that also serve local communities. Refugee from Central America,
women and children How are children, women and LGBTI people impacted by this crisis? Armed gangs operate with near impunity in certain
parts of the region, often targeting youth and children who refuse to join their gangs or participate in criminal activity. Their families are not safe either as, in
many cases, they are attacked or forced to pay exorbitant “war taxes” as a result of revenge or retaliation. Women and girls are victims of SGBV at
incredibly high rates. Tens of thousands have fled El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in order to escape domestic violence, rape and sexual assault.
Members of the LGBTI community are also subject of severe discrimination, violence and persecution because of their sexual
orientation and gender identity. They often face barriers to basic services - such as health, education and employment - and often lack legal protection. As of
November 2019, only half of the displaced LGBTI people in El Salvador had studied beyond primary school. SGBV in women How has the COVID-19 pandemic
affected the crisis? The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the risks of thousands of people in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Lockdowns and
restrictions of movement allow criminal gangs to strengthen control over communities as it is harder for people that need to flee to find safe haven, increasing
the risk of extortion, drug trafficking and violence across the region. These risks are in addition to the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic, which has caused
many displaced and vulnerable people to lose their livelihoods. In El Salvador for example, poverty levels increased to 41 percent. Central American girl with
mask-COVId-19 What is UNHCR doing to help people fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? The UN Refugee Agency is working closely with the seven
governments leading MIRPS to strengthen protection alternatives and find solutions for refugees and other victims of forced displacement. Some of UNHCR’s
activities in the region include: supporting shelters and safe spaces across Central America and Mexico to assist people on the move; helping host countries
establish efficient refugee status determination procedures; providing livelihood and educational training to empower women, children, LGBTI people and other
vulnerable groups; providing aid, cash grants, psychological support and legal assistance to victims of SGBV and launching campaigns to promote peaceful
coexistence with host communities. During the pandemic, UNHCR has also been working across Central America to provide humanitarian assistance and to
support government responses to COVID-19. UNHCR has scaled up its cash assistance programs to mitigate the economic impact in displaced communities and is
distributing food and cleaning items to help curb the spread of the disease. UNHCR staff member with Nicaraguan girls in Costa Rica People fleeing El Salvador,
Guatemala and Honduras need your help… Monthly giving is the most convenient, effective and efficient way you can help people fleeing violence and
persecution. Start making a lifesaving difference today. Please become USA for UNHCR’s newest monthly donor.
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Millions are at-risk of death
Matt Rivers explained on January 25, 2024,

https://abcnews.go.com/International/inside-deteriorating-conditions-forcing-south-american-migrants-flee/story?i
d=106633665
As the migrant crisis continues to weigh on cities across the United States, immigration advocates and international groups contend that most
Americans
are not aware of the depths of despair that have forced the migrants to relocate from country to country. Extreme
poverty, racism, and even violence have followed many of these South American families to whatever location
they have fled due to the region's troubled geo-political state, according to experts. Hugo Hurtado and Mileidy Navarro, a Venezuelan couple with a son and
daughter, told ABC News Live that they know about those struggles too well. Six years ago, they became part of the millions of Venezuelans who left the country
for a better life following the nation's economic decline and settled in Bogota, Colombia. Today, the family is facing more economic struggles that are forcing
them to make another long arduous journey to ensure a better future for their kids. Mileidy Navarro speaks with ABC News' Matt Rivers. ABC News "Who would
want to leave their country, their home? No one. Circumstances force people to make those decisions," Navarro told ABC News Live in
Spanish. MORE: Migrant encounters along southwest border reach all-time high of 302,000 Venezuela's economy has been on a steep decline for years and after
President Nicolas Maduro came into power, the crisis worsened as more people were in poverty and political unrest led to an increase in violence, experts said.
Navarro said she was pregnant with her oldest daughter when the crisis happened and she and her husband couldn't afford to put food on their table. "You look
at yourself in the mirror and see how much weight you’ve lost. That’s when it hits you," she said in Spanish. The
United Nations estimates that
7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, marking the largest forced displacement in history not
caused by war. Thousands of South American migrants cross a border. ABC News Hurtado arrived in Bogota first followed by Navarro and their two
children in 2017. She said she and the kids had to walk under the Simon Bolivar Bridge to get to Colombia. "It’s a rough path. I was knee-deep in the river," she
said in Spanish. At first, Navarro said that things were going OK as the couple's jobs paid enough to make ends meet. But soon she said she began to face
xenophobia at work with customers refusing to even talk with her because she was Venezuelan. Experts have noted that racism and violence against Venezuelan
migrants who settled in other South American countries has increased over the years with many being attacked. "I came here to work. I have an honest job. Why
is this happening to me?" Navarro said in Spanish. Mileidy Navarro walks with her daughter. ABC News Inflation has also hurt many migrants as the cost of living
has increased in many South American countries, forcing many of those Venezuelans and others to relocate again. Recent Stories from ABC News symbol 00:01
02:24 Read More The
U.N. Refugee Agency estimated that half of Venezuelans living in South America can’t afford
three meals a day and lack access to safe housing. Navarro and Hurtado both work six days but they have been struggling financially. The
situation forced Hurtado to head north to the United States, try and find a job and send for the rest of the family once he settled. But the plan hit a roadblock
when they shut the border down when he got to Mexico, according to Navarro. "We had spent all of our savings. I had no money to send him there. So he had to
walk back here," she said in Spanish. MORE: NYC Mayor Eric Adams defends housing migrants at high school amid backlash Hurtado told ABC News that the
journey up north and then back to Bogota, which included trekking through the hot Darien Gap, was difficult both mentally and physically. Recent Stories from
ABC News symbol 00:02 02:24 Read More "I slept in the street. The last thing I remember is that I spent three days without eating. I wasn’t hungry, I just wanted
to come back to my kids," he said in Spanish. Despite the struggle, the family has been saving their money to try to head to the United States again. PHOTO:
Hugo Hurtado plays with his son. Hugo Hurtado plays with his son. ABC News Navarro and Hurtado said they know that if they get to America, they are likely to
face even more challenges as cities struggle to find housing, jobs and a fast path to asylum status for the migrants. Still, they said their situation has left them
with no choice. "I don’t think I’ll become a millionaire there, but I could put a roof over my kids' heads, [and] give them a better quality of life," Hurtado said in
Spanish.
22
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Pro Rebuttals
23
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Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Rights/Causes

Tyranny
Surveillance is already widespread beyond the border now.
ACLU, 2023, NCA Surveilance, December 2023,

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-surveillance#:~:text=The%20National%2
0Security%20Agency%27s%20mass,hundreds%20of%20millions%20of%20Americans.
The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance has greatly expanded in the years since September 11, 2001. Disclosures have shown that, until recently,
the government regularly tracked the calls of hundreds of millions of Americans. Today, it continues to spy on a vast but unknown number of Americans’
The government’s surveillance programs have infiltrated most
international calls, text messages, web-browsing activities, and emails.
of the communications technologies we have come to rely on. They are largely enabled by a problematic law passed by Congress — the
FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which is set to expire this year — along with Executive Order 12,333, the primary authority invoked by the NSA to conduct
surveillance outside of the United States. The Patriot Act has also made it easier for the government to spy on Americans right here at home over the past 15
years. Although the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversees some of the government’s surveillance activities, it operates in near-total secrecy through
one-sided procedures that heavily favor the government. Our Constitution and democratic system demand that government be transparent and accountable to
the people, not the other way around. History has shown that powerful, secret surveillance tools will almost certainly be abused for political ends. The ACLU has
been at the forefront of the struggle to rein in the surveillance superstructure, which strikes at the core of our rights to privacy, free speech, and association.
Surveillance Under the FISA Amendments Act The
FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) gives the NSA almost unchecked power
to monitor Americans’ international phone calls, text messages, and emails — under the guise of targeting
foreigners abroad. The ACLU has long warned that one provision of the statute, Section 702, would be used to eavesdrop on Americans’ private
communications. In June 2013, The Guardian published documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden confirming the massive scale of this
international dragnet. Recent disclosures also show that an unknown number of purely domestic communications are monitored, that the rules that supposedly
protect Americans' privacy are weak and riddled with exceptions, and that virtually every email that goes into or out of the United States is scanned for
suspicious keywords. Learn more about Section 702 In 2008, less than an hour after President Bush signed the FAA into law, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging
its constitutionality. The case, Amnesty v. Clapper, was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and organizations whose work requires them to engage in
sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and email communications with individuals located abroad. But in a 5–4 ruling handed down in February 2013,
the Supreme Court held that the ACLU plaintiffs did not have “standing” to sue because they could not prove their communications had actually been surveilled
under the law. In March 2015, the ACLU filed Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA, a lawsuit challenging “Upstream” surveillance under the FAA. Through Upstream
surveillance, the U.S. government copies and searches the contents of almost all international — and many domestic — text-based internet communications.
The suit was brought on behalf of nine educational, legal, human rights, and media organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, operator of one of the
most-visited websites on the internet. Collectively, the plaintiffs engage in more than a trillion sensitive internet communications every year, and each has been
profoundly harmed by NSA surveillance. Surveillance Under Executive Order 12,333 Executive Order 12,333, signed by President Reagan in 1981 and modified
many times since, is the authority primarily relied upon by the intelligence agencies to gather foreign intelligence outside of the United States. Recent
disclosures indicate that the U.S. government operates a host of large-scale programs under EO 12333, many of which appear to involve the collection of vast
quantities of Americans’ information. These programs have included, for example, the NSA’s collection of billions of cellphone location records each day; its
recording of every single cellphone call into, out of, and within at least two countries; and its surreptitious interception of data from Google and Yahoo user
accounts as that information travels between those companies’ data centers located abroad. In December 2013, the ACLU, along with the Media Freedom
Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding that the government release information about its use of EO
12,333 to conduct surveillance of Americans’ communications
There is no reason the US will become tyrannical – we have checks and balances such as state
governments, the courts, legislatures, etc.
Governments were tyrannical way before the introduction of surveillance

24
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Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Asylum

Asylum is not relevant. Asylum is a process refuges go through to prove they actually qualify as
refugees. We believe people should be entitle to asylum but they should have to go through the
appropriate procedures to prove it, not just enter the US whenever they want.
Turn – If there are records on people the asylum claims can be processed faster
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, May 9, 2024, A new rule might speed up asylum claims at the Southern border,
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/09/1250321311/a-new-rule-might-speed-up-asylum-claims-at-the-southern-border#:
~:text=The%20Biden%20administration%20has%20proposed,has%20been%20under%20fire%20for.
The Biden administration has proposed a new rule intended to speed up the asylum claims process at the
southern border. It says this rule is about making the country safer rather than curbing illegal migration. That's something the Biden administration has
been under fire for. NPR's immigration reporter, Sergio Martinez-Beltran joins me with more. Hey, there. SERGIO MARTINEZ-BELTRAN, BYLINE: Hey. KELLY: Tell me
more about this new rule. What is it? How would it work? MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: Sure. So this new immigration rule would be used to quickly deny migrants with
criminal records their asylum claim. Right now, a migrant trying to enter the U.S. with no legal visa can ask for a credible fear interview in which a person states
that it could be subject to persecution or torture in their home country. If that person gets cleared, they can enter the country and start applying for asylum, and
their criminal background is considered at a later time. Under
this new rule, though, asylum officials would be able to quickly reject an
asylum claim if that person's criminal history is deemed to pose a threat to national security. In that case, this
person would be subject to deportation. And, you know, all of this could happen pretty quick. Now, this ruling is expected to have a fairly narrow
impact because DHS was already denying asylum to people with links to terrorist organizations, so they're now trying to do it faster.
Surveillance solves backlog.

Jim Nash 24, "Modernized biometrics services help USCIS cut immigration backlog", Jim Nash, Modernized Biometrics Services Help Uscis Cut Immigration
Backlog, 2-15-2024, accessed 7-1-2024, https://www.biometricupdate.com/202402/modernized-biometrics-services-help-uscis-cut-immigration-backlog //Stel
The agency that administers the U.S. immigration service says it cut its caseload backlog 15 percent year over year in fiscal 2023.
Biometrics are collected as part of the immigration application process, and automation of that process played a supporting role in the reported
improvement in the caseload and customer experience. It’s the first time in 10 years that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, or USCIS, had reduced its backlog. Staff completed 10 million immigration cases, according to the agency. A $407 million contract to
automate USCIS biometrics and demographic information collection was awarded to Amentum in September. Pluribus Digital won a $135 million contract with
USCIS to modernize in-person interactions in July. A
self-service online application went live in fiscal 2023 that enables people to
reschedule biometrics appointments, including more than 33,000 last year. And agency leaders removed a fee for
biometrics scans in instances when applicants need to change their nonimmigrant status.
25
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Pro Rebuttal to Undermines Humanitarian Obligations

There is not relevant. There is no humanitarian obligation to accept every poor person or anyone
fleeing violence. There are more than 1 billion such people in the world, and based on their
logic, the US would have to accept 1 billion+ people
Turn—Surveillance is used to help determine who legitimately is a refugee. With surveillance

and proper screening, we can exclude non- legitimaterefugees, enableing us to take more
refugees.
26
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Pro Rebuttals to Humanitarianism

Again, we aren’t responsible for the poverty of the migrants. The US government is responsible
for preventing poverty of its citizens.
Even new systems do not reduce border crossings, just drive people to more dangerous routes
Del Valle, 3-12, 24, aby Del Valle, a policy reporter. Her past work has focused on immigration politics, border
surveillance technologies, and the rise of the New Right, The Verge, DHS wants $101 million to upgrade its border
surveillance towers, https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/12/24098881/dhs-border-ai-surveillance-towers-ist
DHS has been working on the surveillance towers in fits and starts since 2005. Its initial attempt, billion-dollar
Secure Border Initiative Network — SBInet for short — was such a failure it was scrapped in 2011. Customs and
Border Protection awarded Elbit a $145 million contract in 2014 to build a new tower system, which is far more
effective from a technological standpoint but has nonetheless failed to reduce border crossings. As we reported in
2022, however, the system has had one concrete result: increased surveillance along the US-Mexico border has
pushed migrants onto more remote, dangerous routes.
27
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Pro Frontlines to Con Rebuttals

28
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Framework
29
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Answers to: Governments Should Help People
The evidence is talking about in the borders and is referring to citizens, not anyone who shows
up.
Governments have sovereign authority to manage their borders

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, August 2014, Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of
Amsterdam, served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988, and was President of the Media
Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-2003. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law and has written extensively on refugees,
migration, international organizations, elections, democratization, and child soldiers. Recent publications include The Limits of Transnational Law, (CUP 2010),
with Hélène Lambert, eds., The Refugee in International Law, (OUP, 2007), 3rd edn. with Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections, (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd
edn., 2006); Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights, (OUP, 2010), 6th edn., with the late Sir Ian Brownlie, QC, eds; and introductory notes to various treaties
and instruments on refugees, statelessness and asylum for the ‘Historic Archives’ section of the UN Audio-Visual Library of International Law. He practises as a
Barrister from Blackstone Chambers, London, The International Handbook of Refugee Protection
http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021 DOA: 9-25-15
The movement of people between states, whether refugees or ‘migrants’, takes place in a context in which
sovereignty remains important, and specifically that aspect of sovereign competence which entitles the state to
exercise prima facie exclusive jurisdiction over its territory, and to decide who among non-citizens shall be allowed
to enter and remain, and who shall be refused admission and required or compelled to leave. Like every sovereign
power, this competence must be exercised within and according to law, and the state’s right to control the admission
of non-citizens is subject to certain well-defined exceptions in favour of those in search of refuge, among others.
Moreover, the state which seeks to exercise migration controls outside its territory, for example, through the physical
interception, ‘interdiction’, and return of asylum seekers and forced migrants, may also be liable for actions which
breach those of its international obligations which apply extra-territorially (Goodwin-Gill 2011; Moreno Lax 2011,
2012).1
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Answers to: Protecting the National Interest Causes Violence
Their argument about violence and the national interest is not about refugees. It’s about war.
We are simply arguing we should manage our border so we can take a reasonable number of
refugees.
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Drugs/Fentanyl
China is the main source of fentanyl
DEA 20 [DEA 20, January 2020, “Fentanyl Flow to the United States,” DEA Intelligence Report,
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20th
e%20United%20States_0.pdf]
China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail
Currently,
and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States.
Seizures of fentanyl sourced from China average less than one kilogram in weight, and often test above 90 percent concentration of pure fentany As Beijing and the Hong Kong Special
Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are
Autonomous Region (SAR) place restrictions on more precursor chemicals,
diversifying their sources of supply. This is evidenced by fentanyl shipments from India allegedly destined for
Mexico. On May 4, 2018, the Hong Kong SAR updated their drug law to control the fentanyl precursors 4-anilino-N-phenethyl-4- piperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone
(NPP) as well as the synthetic opioid U-47700. This matches China’s scheduling of ANPP and NPP on July 1, 2017. The move by the Hong Kong SAR is considerable, since synthetic
China officially controlled all
opioids produced and shipped from China may transit the Hong Kong SAR en route to the United States. Effective May 1, 2019,
forms of fentanyl as a class of drugs. This fulfilled the commitment that President Xi made during the G-20
Summit. The implementation of the new measure includes investigations of known fentanyl manufacturing
areas, stricter control of internet sites advertising fentanyl, stricter enforcement of shipping regulations,
and the creation of special teams to investigate leads on fentanyl trafficking. These new restrictions have
the potential to severely limit fentanyl production and trafficking from China. This could alter China’s position as a supplier to
both the United States and Mexico.
. Corruption means no solvency. Bradley 23 finds 5 to 10% of CBP’s workforce are corrupt. This is
important as increased surveillance won’t solve if corrupt border patrol agents just let them
through the border.
Ali Bradley, 4-7, 23,

https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/border-coverage/as-cartel-power-rises-so-do-con
cerns-about-cbp-corruption/, As cartel power rises, so do concerns about CBP corruption
the flow of illegal drugs and guns has become a multibillion-dollar business along the southern border, and there are
growing concerns federal agents could be enticed to help the cartels. In 2020, The Intercept reported that the
former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) internal affairs believed between 5 and 10 percent of
CBP’s workforce of roughly 50,000 was either actively or formerly engaged in some form of corruption. As Mexican
cartels continue to expand their business dealings — and morale continues to plummet within CBP — there is
concern that the temptation could breed more corruption among officers and agents on the front lines. Retired
Border Patrol Sector Chief Victor Manjarrez says there were cases during his career where U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) officers and Border Patrol agents supported cartels by turning a blind eye. “It was the action of
taking no action,” said Manjarrez. Those favors put entire families at risk, he said. J.J. Carrell retired in 2021 after
being with Border Patrol for 24 years and saw how agents could get roped into helping the cartels.
More fentanyl could be produced in the US if needed

32
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PerplexityAI, 9-7, 24,
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/explain-how-fentanyl-can-be-pr-bKNCA..7R8KR_wMim6a3Cw
Domestic Production Potential: While large-scale production of fentanyl in the U.S. is not widely reported, the
synthetic nature of fentanyl means it can be produced in relatively small spaces, such as basements or small labs.
This makes it challenging for law enforcement to detect and dismantle domestic production sites. Illicit Manufacturing and Distribution:
Illegally manufactured fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, or pressed into counterfeit pills that mimic prescription medications. This mixing increases the risk
of overdose, as users may not be aware of the presence of fentanyl in these products. Law Enforcement and Regulatory Efforts The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other agencies are actively
working to combat the flow of fentanyl into the country by targeting both international and domestic sources. Efforts include stricter regulation of precursor chemicals, enhanced border security to intercept
In summary, while the U.S. may not be a primary production site for
smuggling, and collaboration with international partners to disrupt supply chains.
fentanyl, the potential for domestic synthesis exists due to the drug's synthetic nature.
3. Turn — Coyne 17 finds reducing the supply of drugs without addressing the demand side of
the equation only amplify the impact of cartels in Mexico. Three warrants.
A. It means the drugs are solder for higher profits due to the basic law of supply and
demand, which mean cartels make more money
A. It increases demand for more potent drugs because it’s harder for users to get the drugs
A. It makes the war on drugs more violent because there are amore limited amount of drugs
to solve and areas to traffick in. For example, trafficking thorugh the Canadian border or
ports would be more profitasble
By Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall, CATO, 2017, Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure
of the War on Drugs,
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs
The Cato Institute has released its 2023 Annual Report documenting a dynamic year of growth and productivity, as well as our exciting plans for future impact.
The digital Annual Report takes you on a virtual journey though the stories within this publication and will give you an inside look into how we’re amplifying our
ideas, influence, and impact. Private individuals and policymakers often utilize prohibition as a means of controlling the sale, manufacture, and consumption of
particular goods. While the Eighteenth Amendment, which was passed and subsequently repealed in the early 20th century, is often regarded as the first major
prohibition in the United States, it certainly was not the last. The War on Drugs, begun under President Richard Nixon, continues to utilize policies of prohibition
to achieve a variety of objectives. Proponentsof drug prohibition claim that such policies reduce drug-related crime,
decrease drug-related disease and overdose, and are an effective means of disrupting and dismantling organized criminal enterprises. We analyze the
theoretical underpinnings of these claims, using tools and insights from economics, and explore the economics of prohibition and the veracity of proponent
claims by analyzing data on overdose deaths, crime, and cartels. Moreover, we offer additional insights through an analysis of U.S. international drug policy
utilizing data from U.S. drug policy in Afghanistan. While others have examined the effect of prohibition on domestic outcomes, few have asked how these
programs impact foreign policy outcomes. We
conclude that prohibition is not only ineffective, but counterproductive, at achieving the
goals of policymakers both domestically and abroad. Given
the insights from economics and the available data, we find that the
domestic War on Drugs has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses and fostered and sustained the creation
of powerful drug cartels. Internationally, we find that prohibition not only fails in its own right, but also actively
undermines the goals of the Global War on Terror. People cannot be incarcerated simply because of their race or ethnic origin. However,
they can be incarcerated for possessing or using a substance that other people have associated with that race or ethnic origin. Does the war on drugs provide a
cover to exercise social control and containment of minorities and marginalized communities? A panel of experts explore this subject in depth and take
questions from participants. Introduction Prohibition has not only failed in its promises but actually created additional serious and disturbing social problems
throughout society. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There is not less crime, but more… . The cost of government is not smaller, but
vastly greater. Respect for the law has not increased, but diminished.1 H. L. Mencken, 1925 Writing in 1925, journalist, social critic, and satirist H. L. Mencken
wrote of the complete and utter failure of the U.S. government’s “noble experiment” with alcohol prohibition. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution banned the manufacture, sale, and transport of “intoxicating liquors” within the United States. Proponents of the amendment hailed the new law
as a cure for myriad social ills. Eliminating alcohol consumption would, they argued, reduce crime and corruption and lower the tax burden created by prisons
and poorhouses. Moreover, they contended, Prohibition would improve the health of the American public and prevent the disintegration of families. Despite
these noble intentions, alcohol prohibition was a failure on all fronts. Although alcohol consumption sharply decreased at the beginning of Prohibition, it quickly
rebounded. Within a few years, alcohol consumption was between 60 and 70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level.2 The alcohol produced under Prohibition
varied greatly in potency and quality, leading to disastrous health outcomes including deaths related to alcohol poisoning and overdoses. Barred from buying
legal alcohol, many former alcohol users switched to substances such as opium, cocaine, and other dangerous drugs.3 Criminal syndicates formed to
manufacture and distribute illegal liquors, crime increased, and corruption flourished. In light of these failures, the Eighteenth Amendment was eventually
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repealed in 1933.4 Few today would argue that alcohol prohibition was a wise policy. Even those who largely oppose alcohol consumption recognize the failure
of the Eighteenth Amendment. Most would view Mencken’s commentary as obvious. But his words regarding alcohol prohibition are just as relevant today as
nearly a century ago. While alcohol prohibition may have been one of the first blanket bans on a substance in the United States, it certainly was not the last. In
the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in the United States. As a result, state and local authorities, the federal government, and
even the U.S. military expanded their efforts to combat illicit drugs. Today, the War on Drugs is sometimes viewed as benign. With some states legalizing
medicinal marijuana, others decriminalizing possession, and four states legalizing recreational marijuana, it is easy to forget that the drug war continues to have
serious consequences. In 1980, for example, 580,900 people were arrested on drug-related charges in the United States. By 2014, that number had increased to
1,561,231. More than 700,000 of these arrests in 2014 were related to marijuana. In fact, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the
United States are incarcerated on drug-related charges.5 The penalties for violating U.S. drug law extend beyond prison, and the specter of past drug crimes can
haunt individuals for years. Approximately 50,000–60,000 students are denied financial aid every year due to past drug convictions.6 In addition, those who
violate drug laws are penalized throughout their working careers in terms of limited job opportunities. Many employers, both private and public, will not hire
individuals with prior drug offenses. This has particularly strong implications for minorities and other historically disadvantaged groups, who are incarcerated
more frequently on drug charges. Blacks and Hispanics, for example, are much more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested for drug crimes and
raided by police, even though the groups use and sell drugs at similar rates.7 The monetary cost of U.S. domestic drug policy is equally remarkable. Since the
War on Drugs began more than 40 years ago, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 trillion on interdiction policies.
Spending on the war continues to cost U.S. taxpayers more than $51 billion annually.8 While the domestic impact of the War on Drugs is profound, its
consequences do not stop at the border. American-backed anti-drug operations in Mexico, for example, have resulted in some
of the bloodiest years in Mexican history.9 In fact, since former Mexican president Felipe Calderón began using the
military to fight cartels, more than 85,000 people have been killed.10 Efforts by the U.S. government to eradicate
opium cultivation in Afghanistan have not only failed to reduce global supply but have also empowered and
funded the Taliban.11 The U.S. War on Drugs, like the ill-fated war on alcohol of the early 20th century, is a prime example of disastrous policy, naked
self-interest, and repeated ignorance on the part of elected officials and other policymakers. From its inception, the drug war has repeatedly led to waste, fraud,
corruption, violence, and death. With many states moving toward legalization or decriminalization of some substances, and other nations moving to legalize
drugs altogether, rethinking America’s drug policy is long overdue. In this analysis we review the economics of drug prohibition, a cornerstone of U.S. policy for
more than a century. Domestically, we focus on how prohibition affects health, crime, corruption, and violence. Internationally, we assess how prohibition affects
U.S. foreign policy goals in Afghanistan. Our purpose is to demonstrate general insights about the economics of prohibition and to illustrate the devastating
consequences of ignoring these insights. The Economics of Prohibition Just as proponents of alcohol prohibition claimed that alcohol causes a variety social ills,
advocates of U.S. drug policy argue that drug use and trafficking harm public health, decrease societal wealth, increase unemployment, promote crime, corrupt
law enforcement and other elected officials, and spread disease.12 Combating these alleged effects is the goal of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
whose “National Drug Control Strategy for 2015” annual report stated the following: Illicit drug use is a public health issue that jeopardizes not only our
well-being, but also the progress we have made in strengthening our economy—contributing to addiction, disease, lower student academic performance, crime,
unemployment, and lost productivity.13 In addition, U.S. policymakers view prohibition as a means to reduce drug-related violence and gang activity, as well as
to dismantle powerful drug cartels abroad. The “National Drug Control Strategy for 2015” says that U.S. Federal agencies and partner nations [in drug
interdiction operations] … disrupt, pull apart, and exploit the vulnerabilities of criminal organizations and the networks that are responsible for drug trafficking
and money laundering… . [These policies] degrade the capacity of the cartels to operate efficiently, destabilize their organizations, and create additional
opportunities to disrupt their trafficking organizations.14 If we take the goals stated by public officials and prohibition proponents as sincere, the question is
whether or not current drug policies achieve these goals. To this end, economic thinking offers valuable insight by examining how drug prohibition alters the
incentives faced by individuals on both the supply and demand sides of the illicit drug market. In turn, this analysis allows us to trace the chain of consequences
associated with drug prohibition. Proponents of drug prohibition argue that by banning certain substances, they can reduce or eliminate both the demand and
the supply for drugs, thereby significantly reducing or even eradicating the drug market. What these arguments fail to appreciate, however, is that making
markets illegal fails to reduce, much less eliminate, the market for drugs. Instead, these mandates mainly push the
market for drugs into underground black markets. In addition, prohibition acts as a “tax” on sellers in the drug market. Would-be and
current drug vendors must now incorporate fines, possible prison time, and the cost of evading capture into their business models.15 This tax drives
higher-cost sellers (i.e., those unwilling or unable to incur these additional costs) out of the market. Such a change in the drug market does align with the goals
of prohibition. If sellers are pushed out of the market, this limits the supply of drugs and raises prices.16 These higher prices, in turn, reduce the quantity of
drugs demanded. However, these higher prices and the changes in the market structure caused by prohibition generate unintended consequences, ones that
work against prohibition’s stated goals. Prohibition, Tainted Drugs, Illness, and Overdose The first consequence of drug prohibition is more overdoses and
drug-related illness. This is perhaps best illustrated with an example comparing how information is transferred when a drug is legal versus how it is transferred
when a drug is illegal. Consider, for instance, a mislabeled or impure version of a legal, over-the-counter medication. Once a consumer becomes ill or overdoses
on this medication, this information is reported, collected, and analyzed by relevant institutions. In addition, information about product quality, or lack thereof, is
relayed through other channels, including media outlets, social media, and word of mouth. Consumers can therefore adjust their consumption accordingly. On
the supply side, suppliers of a legal medication face the incentive to recall the product and correct the error to retain their customers and prevent legal
repercussions. These quality control mechanisms and information regarding purity are weaker or absent in a black market for drugs.
First,
underground markets provide less information about products and vendors because transactions occur in secret.
Second, consumers in the market avoid reporting defective or impure substances because this might implicate
their own law-breaking. Third, consumers of illegal drugs have no legal recourse should they purchase a substance
of inferior quality, in contrast to individuals who bought tainted headache medicine or contaminated food in a
legal market. On the supply side, producers and sellers of impure or tainted products face weak incentives to remove
these products, knowing that buyers are unlikely to communicate with one another and unlikely to report their problems. Taken together, these factors allow
more poor-quality drugs onto the market, which increases the chance of poisoning and overdose. This is not the only way that prohibition can increase
overdoses. On the supply side,
prohibition leads sellers to create, transport, and sell more potent materials because
prohibition’s added costs incentivize higher-potency drugs and their higher value per unit. For example, under prohibition,
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suppliers will tend to offer heroin compared to marijuana, since heroin is more valuable per unit (heroin sells for around $450 per gram, while marijuana sells for
between $10 and $16 per gram in the United States). Likewise, drug dealers will tend to sell more potent versions of all drugs. For instance, someone selling
marijuana will likely provide a product with higher concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana, as they can earn
more money per unit.17 A
similar shift to more potent substances occurs on the demand side. Because prohibition raises
drug prices, users seek more bang for their buck. That is, since the overall cost of obtaining drugs is higher, more potent drugs look relatively
cheaper than weak drugs. If we assume that drug users rationally respond to risk and look to maximize their satisfaction or high from every dollar spent, this has
three important implications. First, users will likely switch from lower potency to higher potency within a given type of drug (for example, from marijuana with
lower to higher concentrations of THC). Second, users may switch from low-potency drugs to harder drugs (such as from marijuana to cocaine). Third, users are
likely to employ ingestion methods that increase the effectiveness of drugs (such as injecting rather than smoking a drug). Taken together, these information and
potency effects mean that prohibition likely increases drug overdoses. Prohibition and Drug-Related Disease By
raising drug prices, which pushes
people toward harder drugs, prohibition increases disease transmission. As mentioned above, higher prices
encourage more intense methods of use, such as injection. Law enforcement’s desire to promote prohibition generates restrictions on
legal needles and syringes. In many states, it is illegal to buy and sell needles and syringes without a prescription. These two effects combine to encourage the
reuse and sharing of dirty needles. (Repeated use of needles even by the same individual is unsafe. Needles dull with each use and may break off under the skin,
thus causing infections or other problems.) The sharing of needles drastically increases the risk of transmitting blood-borne diseases such as HIV/AIDS and
hepatitis. Prohibition and Violence Proponents of prohibition claim that banning the manufacture, sale, and use of drugs will reduce drug-related violence. This
claim rests on the assumption that drug use leads to violence. But violence in drug markets may instead result from the institutional context created by
prohibition. When drugs are illegal, users cannot use formal legal channels to resolve disputes or seek legitimate protection for their business transactions.
Neither buyers nor sellers in the illicit drug trade will turn to the police or other legal dispute-resolution mechanisms. Instead, individuals must solve their own
problems, which often means they use violence to solve issues as opposed to more peaceful means of legal dispute resolution. In
addition to pushing
individuals in the drug trade toward violence, prohibition means that those involved in the drug market are
automatically criminals. This lowers the cost of committing a subsequent crime, such as assaulting a rival drug
dealer, relative to a scenario in which drugs are legal. Moreover, prohibition may increase the benefits of using
violence. By gaining a reputation for using violence, those involved in the drug trade may exert more effective
control over the market. One result is that those with a comparative advantage in violence and criminality will be attracted to the market for drugs since
these skills are necessary for long-term success. Taken together, the lack of legal channels combined with automatic criminalization lowers the cost of engaging
in criminal activity and increases the benefit of using violence. It follows that the prohibition of drugs may be the primary cause of crime in the drug market, not
the physical effects of use.18 Increased violence in the drug market may generate additional unintended consequences. As
a result of violent drug
interactions, police are more likely to adopt more intense techniques and stronger equipment. As these practices
become ingrained in everyday policing, citizens outside the illicit drug market will also be affected. Furthermore,
prohibition means police are granted increased power over the lives of citizens. Absent the appropriate checks, these changes may disproportionately impact
particular groups. The disproportionate number of black and Hispanic individuals incarcerated in the criminal justice system, for instance, has led to protests and
social movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Prohibition and Cartels Proponents of prohibition argue that these policies disrupt and dismantle drug cartels. In
practice, however, prohibition appears to promote cartelization of the drug industry. Recall that drug prohibition keeps some suppliers out of the drug
market—those unwilling or unable to take the risks associated with operating in an illicit industry. Those individuals and groups that remain are those more
comfortable with using violence and engaging in illicit activity. In a legal market for drugs, not only would the costs and benefits of using violence change
(violence would be less attractive), but new entrants could more easily penetrate the market. Over time, monopoly power would be eroded as in other
competitive markets. As such, cartels would be unlikely to form and would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Under prohibition, however, the
cost of maintaining a monopoly is reduced, as government policies effectively drive out would-be competitors, making it easier for cartels to form and maintain
their dominant market position. Moreover, these effects are self-perpetuating. Under
a cartelized market, monopoly power leads to an
increase in prices, which further increases the benefits to dominant producers using violence to maintain their
market position. Indeed, the rise of cartels in the drug industry is remarkably well documented, with researchers
arguing that “cartelization in the drug trade appears to exist at every stage of production.”19 Examples abound: Chinese
opium gangs dominated the opium trade during early prohibition efforts. Colombian drug cartels controlled the flow of cocaine into the United States
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Today, Mexican drug cartels provide a variety of drugs—including marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine—to U.S.
markets. In each of these cases, the violence associated with the drug markets has been substantial. Prohibition and Corruption The
cartelization of the
drug industry under prohibition helps give rise to yet another unintended consequence: the corruption of public
officials and civil servants. The illegal nature of the market, desire to avoid capture, and potentially high profit margins create a strong incentive for
those involved in the drug trade to avoid being captured and punished. As a result, these individuals are more likely to attempt to bribe public officials (including
police officers, military personnel, judges, and other elected officials) involved in drug interdiction.20 While some officials may take these bribes willingly, the
violent tendencies of people involved in the drug trade provides additional motivation for public officials to accept bribes. Indeed, we observe that those
who refuse to take bribes are often threatened with violence against their families. Consider Mexico, in which
lawyer and Mexican senator Arturo Zamora Jiménez notes that “Enforcing current laws to prosecute criminals is
difficult because members of the cartels have infiltrated and corrupted the law enforcement organizations that
are supposed to prosecute them, such as the Office of the Attorney General.”21 Consequences of the War on Drugs: Evidence
from the United States Until the turn of the 20th century, currently outlawed drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine were legal under federal and virtually
all state laws. In 1906, Congress implemented the first restrictions on the sale and use of some substances, including cannabis, morphine, cocaine, and heroin,
with the Pure Food and Drug Act, labeling many substances as addictive or dangerous.22 In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act further regulated the market for
opiates, cocaine, and other substances, resulting in a surge in drug offense charges. By 1938, more than 25,000 American doctors had been arraigned on
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narcotics charges; some 3,000 served time in prison.23 While these early laws are important for understanding current drug restrictions, the strictest and most
relevant polices began in the 1970s when Nixon declared drugs “public enemy number one.”24 In 1970, Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control Act (CDAPC), which brought many separate federal mandates under a single law and established a schedule of controlled substances. In
1972, the House voted unanimously to authorize a “$1 billion, three-year federal attack on drug abuse.”25 The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began
operations the following year, absorbing other agencies, including the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law
Enforcement (ODALE). The DEA was tasked with enforcing all federal drug laws, as well as coordinating broader drug interdiction activities.26 Under the direction
of the DEA, what is now known as the War on Drugs quickly expanded in scale and scope. Overdose Deaths and Drug-Related Illness in the United States
Under prohibition, poor information quality and flow, combined with potency effects on both sides of the market,
would predict an increase in drug-related deaths. This is precisely what we observe. In 1971, two years before the creation of the DEA, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that slightly more than 1 death per 100,000 people in the United States was related to drug overdose.
This figure rose to 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people by 1990 (see Figure 1). By 2008, there were 12 overdose deaths per 100,000 people.27 Figure 1 Overdose
Deaths per 100,000 People, 1980–2008 Media Name: pa-811-figure-1.png Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Data Brief 81: Drug Poisoning
Deaths in the United States, 1980–2008,” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db81_tables.pdf#4. These
numbers have continued to
climb. According to the CDC, more than 47,000 overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2014, representing
14.7 deaths per every 100,000 people in the United States, the most overdose deaths ever recorded in the country. Between 2000 and 2014, more people in the
United States died from drug overdoses than from car crashes.28 As economic reasoning predicts, the majority of these deaths are related to consumption of
more potent drugs. In 2014, for instance, 61 percent of all overdose deaths were caused by opioids. The rate of opioid overdoses increased significantly in the
first 15 years of the new millennium. Between 2013 and 2014, overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids nearly doubled, and the rate of all opioid overdoses
has more than tripled since 2000.29 The
spread of drug-related disease in the United States has also seen a sharp increase
since the launch of the War on Drugs. In 2000, nearly 60 percent of all new hepatitis C infections and 17 percent of hepatitis B infections occurred
in drug users.30 While the majority of new HIV/AIDS cases result from unprotected sexual encounters, 6 percent of all new infections result from intravenous
drug use.31 As of 2012, an estimated 91,000 Americans live with HIV/AIDS acquired via drug use.32 Violence in the U.S. Drug Market Just
as overdose
deaths and drug-related illnesses increase under drug prohibition, so, too, does violence related to the market for
drugs. In one study of New York City homicides, researchers found that while only 7.5 percent of murders
committed during the period analyzed were related to the physical effects of drug use, 40 percent were related to
the “exigencies of the illicit market system.”33 Other studies over the past four decades have reached similar findings. A 1998 study found
that increased drug enforcement was positively and significantly associated with increases in violent crime.34 Another
study from the same period found that variance in drug enforcement accounted for more than half of the variation in homicide rates between 1900 and 1995,
with more drug enforcement correlating with more violence.35 The
International Centre for Science in Drug Policy conducted an
extensive survey of the literature related to violence in the drug market, finding overwhelming evidence that
prohibition has led to an increase in crime as opposed to a decrease.36 Cartelization of the Drug Industry Just as alcohol prohibition
gave rise to the American Mafia, the early prohibition of opium and other drugs in the late 1800s and early 1900s fostered the formation of Chinese drug gangs.
From the 1890s to the 1930s, for example, the Tong Wars took place in New York’s Chinatown. These tongs, or fraternal organizations, acted as gangs, and they
profiteered from opium, gambling, and prostitution, using violent tactics ranging from stabbings to bombings.37 The tendency of prohibition policies to foster
organized crime is not limited to these historical cases. The
modern War on Drugs promoted the creation and strengthening of
violent cartels. Colombian economist Eduardo Sarmiento Palacio, for example, argued that the U.S. War on Drugs led directly to the rise of Colombian drug
cartels.38 The best illustration of the cartel problem can be observed in Mexico and along the southern U.S. border.39 As a result of frequent crackdowns on
drug sellers in the United ….The
unintended consequences of the War on Drugs do not affect all groups equally. In the
United States, it is well documented that these policies disproportionately impact minority communities,
particularly blacks and Hispanics.
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Crime
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Answers to: Immigrants Less Likely to Commit Crimes
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Their evidence about how immigrants are less likely to commit crimes is about legal immigrants.
Our argument is that illegal immigrants commit crimes and they don’t deny they do.
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Answers to: Criminals Are Just Released Anyhow

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When criminals are released, they are tracked with surveillance. In the status quo, they are just
released.
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Terrorism
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Answers to: No Immigrant Terrorists
Many immigrant terrorists
Viktor Marsai on March 4, 2024,

https://cis.org/Oped/Illegal-Immigrant-Terrorism-RightWing-Boogeyman-Or-Credible-Threat,
In mainstream academic discussion, the link between illegal immigration and security is said to be merely a social construct. As stated by the authors of the
well-known book “The Age of Migration,” there has been a post-Cold War trend of associating migration with security issues, a process referred to as
“securitization.” It is claimed that this often occurs in the absence of a genuine threat, leading politicians to create an imagined threat. The contention is that
labeling migrants as potential “terrorists” incites fear and a sense of danger. However, when
examining available data and information, it’s
clear that the security risk posed by illegal immigration is more than just a political tactic or a social construct. Terrorist
groups are exploiting the movement of people into the U.S. and Europe to infiltrate these societies and carry out very real terrorist attacks. This remains a
concern even though the vast majority of these immigrants have no ties to extremist organizations. Underestimating the security challenges posed by illegal
mass immigration is just as damaging as overstating the issue. As Mark Krikorian points out in his book “A New Case Against Immigration,” all the terrorists
involved in the 9/11 attacks had committed some kind of immigration fraud. There are many examples of the link between
terrorism and immigration since 9/11 too. For instance, in the fiscal year 2023, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) caught 736 people listed on the
Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS). Other extremists have been caught on their way to the U.S. as well. In February 2023, Lutrnan Warsame
Farah, the oldest son of a top leader of Al-Shabaab, a recognized Somali terrorist group, was arrested in Costa
Rica. Farah, who was using fake identities and someone else’s Swedish passport, was caught with the help of the FBI. A few months later, in
November, another Somali man linked to Al-Shabaab, Ali Abdinuur Ahmed, was detained in a migrant center in
Costa Rica, just 10 kilometers from the Panama border. This center is a common stop for illegal immigrants traveling through the notorious
Darien Gap on their way to the U.S. The link between illegal immigration and terrorism isn’t just an American issue; it’s also present in Europe. For example, at
the end of 2022, Serbian police arrested an Afghan army general and a sniper who were wanted by France on
terrorism charges. The Serbian police made these arrests at a makeshift camp near Subotica, close to the Hungarian border. They found 109 illegal
migrants there, 29 of whom were of particular security interest. In October 2023, a report from the Hungarian National Information Centre revealed that the
Taliban’s intelligence service was trying to take control of Afghan human-smuggling groups in the Vojvodina region of Serbia, near the Hungarian border. The
report identified two Afghan groups, named 40-059 and 313 (the latter referencing the Taliban’s Badri 313 “elite” brigade), as controlling most of the
people-smuggling in Northern Serbia. The 40-059 group was even actively posting propaganda videos on TikTok, showing off their combat skills in a style similar
to extremist groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Hamas. Additionally, an investigation by Balkan Insight brought attention to the fact that organized criminal networks
in Northern Serbia were arming themselves, often with weapons provided by Albanian criminal groups from Kosovo and Albania. Recent terrorist
attacks in Europe, carried out by illegal immigrants, show that there is indeed a link between immigration and
terrorism. From the stabbings in Nice in 2020 to the Brussels shooting in 2023, there have been many successful and thwarted terrorist plots involving illegal
immigrants in recent years. It’s true that only a tiny fraction of all new arrivals are linked to extremist groups or ideologies. In the U.S., for example, only 0.0083
percent of all encounters were processed through the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS). In Europe, given its closer proximity to terrorist hotspots in the Middle
East and Africa, this percentage might be a bit higher. Compared to the total number of illegal arrivals, it’s still a small proportion, but we must remember that
the 9/11 attacks were carried out by only 19 terrorists. In Europe, most recent attacks have been carried out by lone wolves, but these individuals have still
caused significant harm and damage. Additionally, the statistics only include extremists who have been caught and identified by authorities. There are many
individuals with terrorist ties who haven’t yet been recorded on any list. We also can’t overlook the large number of ‘got-aways’ – those who have entered the
U.S. and Europe without any screening. Since fiscal year 2021, at least 1.7 million illegal immigrants have evaded capture and disappeared somewhere in the U.S.
without undergoing any security checks.
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Answers to: Department of Defense Trade-Off
There is no evidence that even if there is a trade-off that resources will come from the Middle
East
The US iis currently placing billionsof dollars in resources in the Middle East because of Iran and
Israel. They wouldn’t move those.
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The lijnk isn’t talking about surveillance resources trading off
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Answers to: Won’t Use a Nuke
We didn’t say they’d detonate a nuclear weapon. We said they’d detonate a dirty bomb.
46
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Economy
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Answers to: Poverty of the Migrants
Again, we aren’t responsible for the poverty of the migrants. The US government is responsible
for preventing poverty of its citizens.
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Answers to: Immigrants Boost the Economy
We aren’t saying there shouldn’t be immigrants. We are saying there shouldn’t be. More illegal
immigrants. We can let in plenty of legal immigrants to boost the economy.
Two, this isn’t a general debate about the economy. We are arguing illegal immigration hurts low
wage workers that causes poverty
Three, it doesn’t matter if it helps the economy if social services for the poor are overwhelmed
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Con Rebuttals
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Con Rebuttal to Framework

First, their own evidence says governments should help people on their own soil. These
immigrants are on American soil.
Second, we have a moral obligation to refugees

Michael Walzer, philosopher, 2008, Spheres Of Justice: A Defense Of Pluralism And Equality, Kindle Edition, page
number at end of card
I won’t try to recount here the history of Western ideas about strangers. In a number of ancient languages, Latin
among them, strangers and enemies were named by a single word. We have come only slowly, through a long
process of trial and error, to distinguish the two and to acknowledge that, in certain circumstances, strangers (but
not enemies) might be entitled to our hospitality, assistance, and good will. This acknowledgment can be
formalized as the principle of mutual aid, which suggests the duties that we owe, as John Rawls has written, “not
only to definite individuals, say to those cooperating together in some social arrangement, but to persons generally.”
1 Mutual aid extends across political (and also cultural, religious, and linguistic) frontiers. Walzer, Michael
(2008-08-05). Spheres Of Justice: A Defense Of Pluralism And Equality (p. 33). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
Third, prioritizing the national interest means violence
Allen Buchanan, political philosopher at Duke, 2004 Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations
for International Law, Kindle Edition, page/location number at end of card
Moreover, in the current context in which the most serious violent conflicts occur within states, Morgenthau's
assertion that we reduce the risk of violence by setting aside concern for human rights and pursuing only the
national interest rings hollow. Today the subordination ordination of human rights and other moral concerns to
national interest often takes the form of the oppression of national minorities. The pursuit of national interest,
rather than being an effective strategy for peace as Morgenthau envisioned it, has proved to be a recipe for
violent internal conflict that often spills across borders. (One might overlook this fundamental point if one wrongly
believed that each state contains one nation and that therefore the pursuit of the national interest serves the
interests of everyone in the state.) Allen Buchanan. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations
for International Law (Oxford Political Theory) (Kindle Location 1426). Kindle Edition.
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Con Rebuttal to Terrorism

No risk. They can’t give a single example of a terror attack caused by an illegal immigrant
Turn -- Expanding surveillance will require DOD resource diversion
US Northern Command, 2019, https://www.northcom.mil/BorderSecurity/, Border Security Video, 6-27-24 (DOA)
Brig. Gen. Walter Duzzny, the Deputy Commanding General of United States Army North, speaks about the troops
stationed along the southern border during a press conference in Sunland Park, New Mexico on June 6, 2019. The
Department of Defense has deployed units across the Southwest Border at the request of U.S. Customs and
Border Protection and is providing surveillance and detection, logistical, engineering, and force protection
functions.
DOD resources trade-off; they are finite
Department of Defense, 2011,

https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Announcement/Signed_ITESR_6SEP11.pdf, Department of
Defense (DoD) Information Technology (IT) Enterprise Strategy and Roadma
d Although DoD’s IT infrastructure enables warfighters to operate effectively in the twenty-first century, the
unnecessary complexity of our networks and IT reduces our ability to secure our information systems, hampers
our ability to share information, and needlessly consumes the finite resources available to DoD
DOD fights terrorism in the Middle East
Department of Defense, 2024,

https://dod.defense.gov/OIR/#:~:text=Combined%20Joint%20Task%20Force%20Operation%20Inherent%20Resolve
%20continues%20to%20work,actions%20to%20increase%20regional%20stability.
Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve continues to work by, with and through regional partners
to militarily defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, in order to enable whole-of-coalition governmental
actions to increase regional stability.
Zero risk of nuke terror---acquisition is impossible, terrorists can’t make bombs AND no group
wants to.
John Mueller 23. Woody Hayes Senior Research Scientist at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies,
adjunct professor of political science at The Ohio State University, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “The Risk of
Nuclear Terrorism.” Oxford Academic. 6/20/23.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/46401/chapter/408850472
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There are three potential routes a terrorist group might take to obtain a nuclear weapon.
One would be for it to be given or sold a bomb by a generous like-minded nuclear state for delivery abroad—the impelling fear
about Iraq in 2003. This is highly improbable, however, because there would be too much risk, even for a country led by extremists,
that the ultimate source of the weapon would be discovered. As prominent analyst Matthew Bunn puts it, ‘A dictator or oligarch
bent on maintaining power is highly unlikely to take the immense risk of transferring such a devastating capability to
terrorists they cannot control, given the ever-present possibility that the material would be traced back to its origin’.
Important in this last consideration are deterrent safeguards afforded by ‘nuclear forensics’, the rapidly developing science (and art) of connecting nuclear
materials to their sources even after a bomb has been exploded.15
Moreover, thereis a very considerable danger to the donor that the bomb (and its source) would be discovered even before
delivery or that it would be exploded in a manner and on a target the donor would not approve—including on the
donor itself. Another concern would be that the terrorist group might be infiltrated by foreign intelligence.16
A second route would be for the terrorist group to steal or illicitly purchase a bomb. In the wake of the Cold War, there was great
worry about such ‘loose nukes’ in unstable post-Communist Russia. However, both Russian nuclear officials and experts on the Russian nuclear programme point
out that those bombs
are difficult to maintain and have a lifespan of one to three years, after which they become ‘radioactive scrap
metal’.17 Even some of those most alarmed by the prospect of atomic terrorism have concluded that, ‘It is probably true that there
are no “loose nukes”, transportable nuclear weapons missing from their proper storage locations and available for purchase in some way’.18
It might be added that Russia and other nuclear powers have an intense interest in controlling any weapons on their territory. Stephen Younger, former head of
nuclear weapons research and development at Los Alamos National Laboratory, notes, ‘Regardless of what is reported in the news, all nuclear nations
take the security of their weapons very seriously’.19
Moreover, as technology has developed, finished bombshave been outfitted with devices that will trigger a non-nuclear
explosion that will destroy the bomb if it is tampered with.20 And there are other security techniques: bombs can be
kept disassembled with the component parts stored in separate high-security vaults, and procedures can be organized so that two
people and multiple codes are required not only to use the bomb, but also to store, to maintain, and to deploy it.21
Since terrorists are unlikely to be able to buy or steal a useable bomb, and since they are further unlikely to have one handed to them by
an established nuclear state, the most plausible route for terrorists would be to manufacture the device themselves from
purloined materials. This is the route identified by a majority of leading experts as the most likely to lead to nuclear terrorism.22 Because of the dangers and
difficulties of transporting and working with plutonium, a dedicated terrorist group, it is generally further agreed, would choose to try to
use highly enriched uranium.23 The idea would be to obtain as much of this stuff as necessary and then to fashion it into an explosive.
The likely product of this effort would not be a bomb that can be dropped or hurled, since this would massively complicate the delivery problem. Rather, the
terrorists would seek to come up with an ‘improvised nuclear device’ (IND) of the simplest design—one that could be set off at the target by a suicidal
detonation crew. This would be a ‘gun’ type of device in which masses of highly enriched uranium are hurled at each other within a tube. At
best, such a
device would be, as even the deeply concerned Allison acknowledges, ‘large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and
inefficient’.24 The process is a daunting one, even in this minimal case. In particular, the task requires a considerable
series of difficult hurdles to be conquered and in sequence.
At the present time and likely for the foreseeable future, stateless
groups are simply incapable of manufacturing the required fissile
material for a bomb because the process requires an effort on an industrial scale.25 Moreover, they are unlikely to be
supplied with the material by a state for the same reasons a state is unlikely to give them a workable bomb. Thus, they
would need to steal or illicitly purchase this crucial material.
The terrorist thieves would also need to know exactly what they want and where it is, and this presumably means trusting bribed, but not necessarily
dependable, insiders. And to even begin to pull off such a heist, the terrorists would need to develop a highly nuanced street sense in foreign areas often filled
with people who are suspicious of strangers.26 This
approach requires the terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates,
including brokers and money transmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or, either out of guile or incompetence,
furnish them with stuff that is useless. Insiders might also come to ruminate over the fact that, once the heist had been accomplished, the
terrorists would (as Jenkins puts it none too delicately) ‘have every incentive to cover their trail, beginning with eliminating their confederates’.27
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In addition, because of improving nuclear safeguards and accounting practices, it is decreasingly likely that the theft would remain
undetected.28 This is an important development because, once it is noticed that some uranium is missing, the authorities would investigate the few people
who might have been able to assist the thieves, and one who seems suddenly to have become prosperous is likely to arrest their attention right from the start.
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Con Rebuttal to Crime

Turn – immigrants less likely to commit crimes than US citizens
Stephane Kule, March 12, 2024, Immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the
U.S.-born,
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/03/immigrants-are-significantly-less-likely-to-commit
-crimes-than-the-us-born/
Study finds over a 150-year period, immigrants have never been incarcerated at a greater rate than those born in the United States March 12, 2024 | By
Stephanie Kulke immigrants Undocumented immigrants attempt to cross into the U.S. near Del Rio, Texas. Prompted by frequent questions about the impact of
immigration on local crime rates, researchers used data from the U.S. Census to find out whether immigrants were more likel...Show More Caption → Economics
Expert Viewpoint Global Inequality Institute for Policy Research Weinberg College Some Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are a criminal threat
to society. Former President Donald J. Trump has leveraged this assumption to inflame the rhetoric around immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border. Astudy
co-led by Northwestern University economist Elisa Jácome provides the first historical comparison of incarceration
rates of immigrants to U.S.-born citizens. Using incarceration rates as a proxy for crime, a team of economists analyzed 150
years of U.S. Census data and found immigrants were consistently less likely to be incarcerated than people born
in the U.S. They also found beginning in 1960, the incarceration gap widened such that immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than the
U.S.-born. “Our study shows that since 1870, it has never been the case that immigrants as a group have been more incarcerated than the U.S.-born,” Jácome
said. Jácome is an assistant professor of economics and a faculty fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern. A multi-university team of
economists had previously studied the upward mobility of immigrants and found that children
of low-income immigrants tended to be
more upwardly mobile than U.S.-born children of low-income families. Prompted by frequent questions about the impact of
immigration on local crime rates, the researchers used data from the U.S. Census to find out whether immigrants were more likely to commit crimes than the
U.S.-born. Starting with the 1870 U.S. Census — the first to include the full population including those formerly enslaved — through the most recent in 2020,
which collects data nationwide including from correctional facilities, the researchers measured the gaps between immigrant and U.S.-born levels of
incarceration. Over that 150-year period they found that immigrants’ incarceration rate was only slightly lower than that of U.S.-born men. However, in the more
recent time period, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens, and 30% less likely relative to U.S. born whites. To explain what
happened beginning in 1960, Jácome and co-authors point to globalization and skill-based technological changes as coinciding with the gap. “A surprising finding
was the extent to which immigrants with lower levels of education today are significantly less likely to commit crimes than their U.S.-born counterparts,” Jácome
said. “This may indicate immigrants are more resistant to economic shocks that have affected less-educated men in recent decades.” The researchers say
policymakers should consider a variety of factors in addressing immigration issues. “The impact of immigration on the economy is a multifaceted topic and crime
is just one of the factors,” Jácome said. “To get a holistic picture, policymakers should also account for research, invention and services that are being provided
because of immigrants. “To the extent you want to make a cost-benefit statement about immigration, you must also look at benefits lost if immigration was
reduced.” The study co-authors are Ran Abramitzky, professor of economics at Stanford University; Leah Boustan, professor of economics at Princeton
University; Santiago Pérez, associate professor of economics at the University of California at Davis; and Juan David Torres, doctoral student in economics at
Stanford. “Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the U.S.-born, 1850–2020” was released as a working paper by the National
Bureau of Economic Research in July 2023, and will be published in the American Economic Review: Insights at a later date.
Surveillance doesn’t solve murder by immigrants, as caught immigrants are released
House Committee on Homeland Security, 6-27, 24,

https://homeland.house.gov/2024/06/27/startling-stats-bidens-mass-parole-catch-and-release-agenda-continues-to
-fuel-historic-border-crisis-endanger-americans/, STARTLING STATS: BIDEN’S MASS-PAROLE, CATCH-AND-RELEASE
AGENDA CONTINUES TO FUEL HISTORIC BORDER CRISIS, ENDANGER AMERICANS
President Biden and the now-impeached Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
have released millions of inadmissible aliens into the country without adequate vetting or screening, while roughly
two million more have entered the country as known gotaways. Notably, this month, two Venezuelan nationals
were charged with the horrific murder of a young girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray, which they committed after
they were apprehended by Border Patrol agents and reportedly released on “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) after
illegally crossing the Southwest border.
55
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56
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Con Rebuttal to Low Wage Work

Their impact to low wage work is poverty. Poverty will be greater if we don’t take people in
because there are no social support services in the countries they are fleeing. This means they
are more likely to die from poverty there.
US economy depends on immigrant labor
Orrenius, July. 2, 2024, Pia M. Orrenius, Ana Pranger, Madeline Zavodny and Isabel Dhillon, Unprecedented U.S.
immigration surge boosts job growth, output, https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2024/0702
The jump in ready-to-work immigrants has boosted population, labor force and job growth in the postpandemic
U.S. economy. Estimates from the Hamilton Project suggest higher immigration boosted payroll job growth by 70,000 jobs per month in 2022 and by
100,000 jobs per month in 2023 and so far in 2024. The upper end of the range of job growth has doubled to 200,000 from 100,000 jobs per month absent the
surge of immigration. It’s not unusual for immigration to account for high shares of job growth. Before the pandemic, from 2010 to 2019, the share of job growth
attributable to immigration averaged 45 percent. The jump in jobs, along with immigrants’ consumption of goods and services in
the United States, also bolsters GDP growth. According to the Hamilton Project study, higher immigration has
contributed about 0.1 percentage points to GDP growth annually in 2022 and 2023 and is projected to do so again
in 2024. The effect on inflation, meanwhile, could be neutral on average. Higher immigration represents a labor supply shock, which should be disinflationary.
But immigrants are also consumers and add to aggregate demand. While certain sectors that extensively depend on immigrants should see costs and prices fall—for example, landscaping and child
care—the population influx could put upward pressure on rents and house prices, particularly in the short run before new supply can be built. Long-run outlook uncertain, but immigration needed for growth The immigration surge has surprised many, and not everyone agrees with the CBO numbers. But household survey
data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are consistent with CBO estimates of immigration in 2023. According to the CPS, the foreign-born population rose by 2.5 million from December 2022 to December 2023, even as we estimate about 500,000 immigrants died. These data points are consistent with a net
immigrant inflow of at least 3 million over the year. The doubts about CBO’s large number involve problems with encounter data (it measures events, not individuals), debates about migrant return rates and criticism of the household survey (whether it overcounts or undercounts immigrants). CBO’s immigration
projections are even more uncertain, with expected net immigration of 3.3 million in 2024, 2.6 million in 2025, 1.6 million in 2026 and a return to the historical average 1.1 million in 2027–33. It’s unclear what factors drive these transitions. Potential changes in U.S. immigration policy, such as the Biden administration’s
recent executive action limiting the entry of some migrants, or an economic downturn could result in gradual normalization of immigration at the border. Even so, many of the migrants who arrived in recent years will want to stay in the United State s. Asylum approval rates
have risen since 2020 but reflect cases filed in years prior. It’s impossible to know what approval rates will be for those who filed
their claims more recently. Humanitarian parolees, in contrast, are supposed to return to their home countries after two years. If immigration
normalizes, it will return to rates that are insufficient to sustain the type of economic growth the U.S. is
accustomed to. The nation is in a sort of demographic autumn, and winter is coming. The retirement of the baby
boomers and overall aging of the workforce, as well as low and falling birth rates mean population growth will
become entirely dependent on immigration by 2040, as deaths of U.S.-born will outpace births (Chart 6). Chart 6
Downloadable chart Chart data Because economic growth depends on labor, capital and productivity, growth in these
factors will set the speed limit of the economy. While technological advances and incentives for investment will
contribute to productivity growth, immigration will be vital to propping up labor force growth.
57
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Con Rebuttal to Social Service Cuts

This evidence is old. It’s talking about really rapid rates of illegal immigration, which are no
longer occurring.
58
DebateUS!
Con Frontline to Pro Rebuttals

59
DebateUS!
Surveillance/Tyranny/Dehumanization
60
DebateUS!
Answers to: Surveillance Already Widespread
One, Surveillance obviously grows under the Pro
First, they have to substantially expand it.
Second, there isn’t significant border surveillance. If there isn, there is no reason to vote Pro to expand it.
Two, the Pro enables the development of more advanced surveilamce technologies, which. Make it worse.
61
DebateUS!
Answers to: Governments Were Tyrannical Before
Governments were tyrannical before, but they are not now but surveillance will enable them to
be so
This technology gets exported abroad to places such as China which will use iit to be tyrannical
62
DebateUS!
Answers to: Checks and Balances Prevent Tyranny
This technology gets exported abroad to places such as China which will use iit to be tyrannical
There are no longer any checks
(a) The Congress is funding and supporting this technology

(B) Trump could win and it could be the last election
© Courts no longer check the power of the presidency
63
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Humanitarianism
64
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Answers to: Too Many Gaps/More Dangerous Routes
This is the status quo – our Office of the Inspector General evidence says they are currently using obsolete tech
with limited capabilities. We need better technologies to close these routes
Even if they end up on more dangerous routes that’s still safer than staying where they are
65
DebateUS!
Answers to: We Aren’t Responsible
We are responsible – these are our fellow humans. That’s our framework evidence
The US is responsible for the violent conditions people are fleeing
Rep Jim McGovern, 2019, US Intervention helped Destabilize Central America — Now, We Have a Moral Obligation
to Help.,
https://repmcgovern.medium.com/decades-of-us-intervention-have-destabilized-central-america-now-we-have-a-m
oral-obligation-to-67713f23a406
Too often, our debate on immigration in this country takes place in a vacuum, removed from the violence and poverty which too often have been exacerbated by
America’s own history of intervention and destabilization in Central America. This weekend I am once again traveling to Central America to see and hear
firsthand the daily realities that drive families north. I want to shine a bright light on the on-going need for us to help rebuild and reinvest in these nations. I
believe that given
our history in the region, America has a moral obligation to help those who flee the conditions
created by many of our own foreign policy decisions. This isn’t an idea I’ve just developed recently. My first visit to El Salvador
was in the early 1980s. While there, I saw firsthand how the United States government supported the brutality of
the Salvadoran government and military toward its own people. I discovered we were an apologist for a military that
massacred a thousand people, including scores of children, at and around a village called El Mozote. I learned that
during the 12-year civil war, over 75,000 civilians were killed and an unknown number, likely in the thousands,
were forcibly disappeared, mainly at the hands of state actors. And towards the end of the war, I watched as some of the highest officials of my country
conferred medals on Salvadoran military officers even after we knew they had given the orders to murder six Jesuit priests and two women, including the rector
and faculty members of the University of Central America. Over the past 35 years, I have returned to El Salvador many times, and traveled throughout the
region, including in Honduras and Guatemala. I have learned that to make the best policy decisions and investments in U.S. aid, we need to confront and learn
from our own history and mistakes. Under
Republican and Democratic Administrations alike, the U.S. has made bad
judgments and miscalculations that have had real and adverse consequences in the lives of real people. As former
Senator Frank Church correctly wrote in 1984, in Central America too often we supported a “selfish property-owning minority” and an “indifferent middle class
intransigently protecting their privileges” and ignored the “limitless misery” of a majority that often “lives on the margin of subsistence.” I have learned that we
are more generous with our purse strings in times of war than in times of peace. We have contributed to wars, even been a major actor. In backing governments
that we saw as ideologically friendly, we have helped crush legitimate dissent and the need for radical change, supporting economic interests and institutions
hostile to the rule of law and indifferent to the suffering of their own people. We have ousted democratically-elected governments and accepted the results of
politically convenient but illegitimate elections. As long ago as 1954, the CIA helped organize a coup in Guatemala, overthrowing the democratically elected
government, an action that scarred democracy and development for decades and led to civil war. In the 1980s, a Guatemalan military that received U.S. support
carried out scorched earth campaigns that massacred upwards of 200,000 mostly indigenous people. As
recently as 2017, when the
Organization of American States (OAS) argued that polling place irregularities required Honduras to carry out a
new election, the U.S. accepted the result and recognized as the winner incumbent President Juan Orlando
Hernandez, sparking a spiral of state violence against protestors and dissent that is still on-going. We decry corruption
and human rights abuses, yet partner closely with the political, military and economic actors who commit such crimes with impunity — and directly undermine
efforts to combat impunity, as the Trump Administration has done with its attacks on and withdrawal of support for the International Commission Against
Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). I
have seen how past and current U.S. immigration and deportation policies directly
contributed to the establishment of violent gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Beginning in the 1990s,
we deported tens of thousands of gang members, many for minor infractions, back to the region, seeding the
ground for today’s gang violence. We supported and encouraged the most hardline military and police crackdowns on gang members inside these
countries — the result was an explosion in prison populations where local gang cliques met and formed powerful and coordinated national networks. We failed
to make sustained, timely investments in each of these countries when internal conflicts ended in the early 1990s. In El Salvador alone, where a peace accord
ending a 12-year civil war was signed in 1992, U.S. aid was cut from nearly $200 million annually to $30 million in 1994. Those two decades of neglect are now
coming home to roost, literally. For
many years, the Northern Triangle countries have been cited among the most violent
and dangerous in the world, and U.S. guns help fuel that lethal violence. While many factors contribute to the
violence in each country, guns have played an outsized role in escalating the levels of lethality. According to the
U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), many of these guns originate in the United States. From 2014
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DebateUS!
to 2016 — the only years for which ATF has made data publicly available — 49 percent of crime guns recovered in
El Salvador were originally purchased in the United States. Similarly, 45 percent of crime guns recovered in
Honduras and 29 percent of those recovered in Guatemala have U.S. origins. Yet if you turned on the TV on any given night in
America, you would never hear a single word about how many of our own economic and foreign policies helped contribute to the violence and poverty driving
today’s migrants out of their homes. The bottom line is that no one decides to leave their home overnight or on a whim. People escaping threats or seeking
opportunities move from one marginal neighborhood to another, or from one part of the country to another, or sometimes to neighboring countries before
violence, hunger and the lack of any sense of safety or future exact their final toll. Climate
change has contributed to droughts, coffee
rust, and other agricultural problems that have plagued the region, hurt small producers, and increased hunger,
child malnutrition and food insecurity. Economic policies, many supported by the U.S., have led to small farmers,
especially indigenous people, being forced off their land. Multinational companies have taken over land for industrial farming, mining and
tourism; wealthy landholders expand their holdings to produce sugar, palm oil, soybeans, corn and other biofuels; none are reluctant to use violence when
families and communities resist. In Guatemala and Honduras, environmentalists and land rights activists have been threatened and targeted for violence and
assassination, often with the support of state police and security forces. If America truly wants to get serious about dealing with the crisis on our border, then we
must study the past so that history does not repeat itself. We must acknowledge our share of the blame for the conditions these families face. To be sure, the
problems confronting Central America and the flow of migrants to our southern border are not all due to U.S. foreign policy. Poverty, injustice, violence, murder,
corruption, inequality and impunity in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are homegrown. But history shows, with too few exceptions, that when local
officials and activists have stood up for basic human rights and dignity, the U.S. too often failed to help them, sometimes standing by when they were threatened
and harassed, and at worst, intervening on behalf of those who would bury dissent. We don’t have to imagine what might happen if we looked to solve these
problems instead of demonizing immigrants and asylum seekers once they arrive at our border. I have seen what U.S. aid and our diplomatic missions can
accomplish, even with modest resources. I have seen the many positive results when the U.S. collaborates with local communities, addresses the causes of youth
violence, invests in community-designed development, helps professionalize security forces, facilitates safe and orderly migration for those most at risk, and
supports institutions that strengthen judicial independence and an end to corruption and impunity. Policies that prioritize a better quality of life and respect the
dignity of ordinary people and the poor give people a sense of control over their own lives, hope for a better future for their children, and a reason to remain in
their own countries. Last year, on Sunday, October 14th, Oscar Romero was canonized in Rome. As archbishop of San Salvador, he was an advocate for the poor
and worked for peace amid an escalating civil war. I have visited his humble home, attended Mass at the chapel where he last spoke, and prayed at his tomb.

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1

Our framework is the well-being of the country.

Philosopher Michael Blake explained in 2023 that

Office of the Inspector General,2021,

We need to expand surveillance

remote sensing using a variety

"Unfortunately, we see a great deal of violence committed by illegal

Fentanyl trafficking is destroying America. DEA in May reads that-

DEA. “National Drug Threat Assessment.” DEA.gov, May 2024,

the number of fatal overdoses

Their routine participation and involvement

Allison & Morrell explained in 2024 that

Crista Bryant explained in July that

This could involve a nuclear attack. Squassoni explains

we need a better way to

Illegal immigrants take low wage jobs, causing poverty

Steven Camarota explained in 2013

Caitlin Owens, September 23, 2023,

Oshan Jarrow explained in 2013 that

Our framework is the well-being of humanity

Arizona Central Explains,

Haggerty explains that

Contention II. Humanitarianism

The UN Human Refugee Agency noted in 2023 that,

UNHCCR, October 10, 2023, Central America Displacement Crisis Explained,

Millions are at-risk of death

Matt Rivers explained on January 25, 2024,

Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Rights/Causes

ACLU, 2023, NCA Surveilance, December 2023,

Governments were tyrannical way before the introduction of surveillance

Pro Rebuttal to Surveillance Undermines Asylum

Surveillance solves backlog.

Pro Rebuttal to Undermines Humanitarian Obligations

Turn—Surveillance is used to help determine who legitimately is a refugee. With surveillance

Pro Rebuttals to Humanitarianism

Pro Frontlines to Con Rebuttals

Governments have sovereign authority to manage their borders

http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021 DOA: 9-25-15

China is the main source of fentanyl

Ali Bradley, 4-7, 23,

More fentanyl could be produced in the US if needed

Answers to: Criminals Are Just Released Anyhow

Many immigrant terrorists

Viktor Marsai on March 4, 2024,

Con Rebuttal to Framework

Second, we have a moral obligation to refugees

Third, prioritizing the national interest means violence

Con Rebuttal to Terrorism

Turn -- Expanding surveillance will require DOD resource diversion

US Northern Command, 2019, https://www.northcom.mil/BorderSecurity/, Border Security Video, 6-27-24 (DOA)

DOD resources trade-off; they are finite

Department of Defense, 2011,

DOD fights terrorism in the Middle East

Department of Defense, 2024,

Con Rebuttal to Crime

Surveillance doesn’t solve murder by immigrants, as caught immigrants are released

House Committee on Homeland Security, 6-27, 24,

Con Rebuttal to Low Wage Work

US economy depends on immigrant labor