Hello and welcome to mind of Micah today on the program. It's the return of Micah's

Read of the Week. It's called Why are border smugglers trafficking baloney? It comes to

us from Texas monthly and it comes to me being my friend Brandon on Twitter at T Brandon

B. Thank you for the DM. If you ever see anything that you think you would like to hear

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get on the phone. All right, on to the read. What you're here for. As I mentioned, it's from

Texas Monthly, Wire Borders, Smugglers, Trafficking, Baloney. The tons of contraband lunchmeats seized

at the U.S. Mexico border tell us something about the market value of nostalgia. It's by Madeline

Agilor. It's from the September 2022 issue of Texas Monthly. The baloney arrives in darkness.

Hundreds of pounds crossed into the U.S. from Mexico at once.

Rolls are stuffed into the back of SUVs, sewn into car seats, shoved into spare tires, or hidden

in suitcases beneath heaps of shirts and socks. Once in El Paso, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection

officer drilled into a car's bumper, and the bit came out pink, covered in the slimy residue of

lunchmeat. The illicit Mexican baloney trade is not a new phenomenon in the United States.

Stephen Colbert did a segment on it in 2012, and in the past decade, it's been covered by the Wall

Street Journal and Time Magazine amongst other outlets. Still, it persists at a steady clip,

a busy, consistent form of commerce that raises the question, why baloney?

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