In the latest episode of the world’s most expensive and least effective game of hot potato, Mexico has just handed over 37 more drug cartel suspects to the United States. It’s a delightful little ritual, really—a geopolitical palette cleanser intended to soothe the ruffled feathers of an incoming Trump administration that views the southern border with the same nuanced understanding a toddler has for a physics textbook. Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch, a man whose job consists primarily of navigating a sea of blood while trying not to get his shoes wet, announced this shipment of human cargo as if it were a grand diplomatic triumph rather than what it actually is: a desperate attempt to stop the orange-hued threats of tariffs and military intervention from becoming reality.

Let’s analyze the theater of it all. We have 37 individuals—mere statistical anomalies in the grand, violent tapestry of the narco-industrial complex—being gift-wrapped and flown north. It is the ultimate performative gesture. Mexico gets to pretend it is finally 'doing something' about the cartels it has allowed to metastasize for decades, while the United States gets to pretend that processing these men through its bloated, dysfunctional legal system will somehow make a dent in the fentanyl-soaked reality of its own suburban malaise. It is a symbiotic relationship of failure. The U.S. provides the insatiable demand and the high-grade weaponry; Mexico provides the labor and the corpses. And now, they’ve added a frequent-flyer program for extradition.

The most exquisite detail of this transaction is the 'pinky-swear' agreement regarding the death penalty. Garcia Harfuch took great pains to assure everyone that the U.S. promised not to execute these 37 suspects. It is a charmingly quaint concern. We are talking about men who have likely presided over more creative methods of expiration than a medieval executioner, yet we are supposed to feel a warm glow of humanitarian progress because they will spend the rest of their lives in a concrete box in Colorado rather than facing a lethal injection. It is the hypocrisy of the 'civilized' world at its peak: we will allow thousands to perish in the streets of Celaya or the alleys of Philadelphia, but we draw a firm, moral line at the state actually finishing the job on the guys who facilitated it all. It’s not justice; it’s a bureaucratic preservation of assets.

Then there is the Trump factor. The former and future president has spent his recent months barking about 'military action' and 'hits' on cartel leadership, treating the sovereign nation of Mexico like a backyard pest problem that requires a heavy dose of industrial-strength pesticide. This sudden surge in extraditions is the Mexican government’s way of throwing a handful of treats at a barking dog in hopes it doesn’t bite the mailman. It is a pathetic display of sycophancy. By handing over these 37 men, Mexico is essentially admitting that its own judicial system is a hollowed-out husk, incapable of holding its own monsters accountable, while the U.S. signals that it is more than happy to play the role of Global Jailer, provided it can use the prisoners as political props in its next election cycle.

Deep down, everyone involved knows this changes nothing. You could extradite 370 or 3,700 suspects tomorrow, and the market would not skip a beat. As long as the American public remains a collective of drug-addicted consumers seeking escape from their own boredom, and as long as the Mexican economy relies on the shadow-flow of billions of dollars to keep its head above water, this cycle will continue. The 'war on drugs' is not a war; it is a business model. These 37 men are just the cost of doing business, the line items on a spreadsheet that must be cleared to satisfy the noisy shareholders in Washington.

We live in a world where reality is managed through press releases and strategic deportations. Garcia Harfuch smiles, Trump tweets, and the machinery of death continues to grind along the border, lubricated by the very money that these extraditions are supposedly trying to stop. It’s a farce, a tragedy, and a bore. But hey, at least they won’t face the death penalty. We wouldn't want to be uncivilized, would we?