Response to comments: Wave 'em through at the border?

I've gotten some thoughtful comments lately and I thought I'd respond to one of them up here rather than down in the comments where few people will see them. In response to my post about just waving people through at the border, Dianne C. Russell writes:

Maybe I’m in the minority around here, but this doesn’t particularly bother me.
The majority of the people crossing the border at official crossing points are legitimate and with papers.
Why are we devoting so many resources to checking and delaying the innocent majority while we do so little to stop people from crossing other places, where virtually none of the people crossing are doing so honestly and with papers?
Why don’t we have those border officers out where they are really needed hassling the people who really need to be stopped?
SeeDubya seems to be catching the “punish the innocent majority, not the real criminals” virus.

I hope I'm not catching that virus; I would like to see trade increase with Mexico and I would also like to see our labor demands met by Mexico—but legally, and securely, with IDs in the system and taxes flowing in as well. And I certainly agree, and have said many times, we need to do more to block off the places where people sneak in and deport the serious criminals first.

That said, terrorists have tried to sneak across legit border checkpoints before.

In 1999, the "Milennium Bomber" Ahmad Ressam crossed into the US from Canada, intending to go down and blow up something in LA on New Year's Eve. Alert—and heroic— customs officials thought he was acting "hinky" and found his bombs. I realize we can't search every person that comes into the United States, but it's entirely reasonable to look at their passport, ask them questions, and take their picture. Maybe even to match up some biometrics: does the fingerprint on the passport match the person in the car?

Terrorists and smugglers aren't dumb. They observe our routines and bureaucracy and try to exploit it. (See the last two paragraphs here.) Even without the Wash Times memo, a reasonably competent cartel member or coyote could figure out that when the wait is too long, only the driver of each car has to show a passport, and conclude that all he has to do is line up a convoy full of legal drivers to choke the checkpoint and the passengers and the stuff in the trunk get through, free and clear.

More than that, there are two elements of border security. One is controlling people, and the other is controlling things. If bad guys want to bring an assembled WMD into the country, it's probably coming in on a truck (or a ship, but that's another story). Big shipments of drugs can come in the same way. Cramped, suffocating slave-ships full of illegals, too. (Interesting stuff goes the other way as well.) And big trucks can't cross in the middle of the desert.

Ideally, I want someone to open up and look inside each truck coming over the border. I want the driver checked, a density meter check, I want a geiger counter, an explosives sniffing machine like they have in the airports, and I want a happy little drug-sniffing puppy to make a circuit around them as well. And every eighth, fifteenth, or thirty-second—it changes every day— gets X-rayed or even unpacked and gone over with a fine-tooth comb, of course alongside any truck that trips an alarm or that looks suspicious.

All this will probably be dismissed as impractical, but it's not that different from what passengers and their luggage get on arrival in an international airport. It may drive up the price of lettuce three cents a head, but that doesn't seem an impermissible burden on commerce.

The airport example is another good one, by the way. A majority of people entering the country at our airports are legal and innocent. Occasionally, though, our scrutiny finds one that's not. Would that we'd had a little more like that.