Border Report, August, 2010

by Ben Small


The death and destruction -- and yes, drug flow -- continue along our Southwest border because the Obama Administration refuses to secure our border, focusing its intentions instead on blocking enforcement of our immigration laws and finding ways to implement policies of back-door amnesty, ignoring the cost in terms of lives and dollars.

While this report suggests I'm commenting on activities during the month of August, the truth is many of the events described below occurred just in the last week.

You probably read in the papers about the mass grave site discovered just outside Ciudad Juarez. Seventy-two bodies, men women and children, slaughtered by Mexican drug lords engaged in human and drug smuggling. Weapons from the ranch where the bodies were found are shown above. No one knows how many women and children escaped the machine guns only to be sold into sexual slavery, torture and snuff films for deviant pleasures. It's believed most of these poor people couldn't come up with the added cash demands their coyote transporters extorted from them. Or maybe they failed to pass whatever acceptability standards their smugglers required.  Border Massacre    Dead Folks Pile

How many other mass grave sites are there? Nobody knows. Car bombs and Dead Cop

But you can bet more mass grave sites will be found. And the cop who was investigating the murders was himself murdered, along with several investigative journalists who nosed into the matter. But the gangs weren't done yet: The mayor of a nearby city was also murdered. And Sunday...another one. 2nd Mexican Mayor Slain

And now car bombs. Two this week alone.

Yup, the drug lords have been busy. 28,000 total known dead so far.

I won't recount the tons of drugs seized this week. I can't keep up with the daily total in Arizona alone. But Border Patrol Agents suggest it's less than ten percent of what's getting through. Nor can I advise the number of those who died from the elements in our southwestern deserts. Temperatures have been in the hundreds all month, and heavy rains south of Tucson this week have caused flash flooding on a wide scale. Walls of water rushing down narrow washes -- the path of choice for illegals -- at speeds approaching thirty miles per hour. We may never have accurate statistics on these dead. Those who aren't eaten by animals or buried may lie underneath the hard-pack clay, a component of concrete.

So, it's fair to ask yet again what our federal government is doing to secure our still porous border. Yes, they've sent a few hundred National Guard troops as sentries, about one per mile, but those troops have been instructed not to enforce our federal immigration laws but to just tell somebody if they see something.

Whom do they tell? ICE, the agency charged with border law enforcement? The Feds instructed ICE not to take illegal border crossers captured by Arizona state authorities, and Janet Napolitano announced a new policy this week: They're dropping deportation measures against those who haven't been convicted of a crime. Back-door amnesty so to speak. So ICE has a morale problem. Their agents this week gave the elected officials -- Janet Napolitano -- governing them a vote of No Confidence. Which raises an interesting question: Why did Napolitano, who was so ardent in demanding the Feds secure our border when she was Arizona's governor, back off from that position after she joined the Obama Administration?

Do you think someone whispered in her ear?

Obama has yet to travel to the border region. Seems he has more pressing matters. Tee times, you know. Doesn't he know Arizona has golf courses?

And what about Eric Holder, our esteemed attorney general? Sorry. He's too busy figuring out what to do with Gitmo detainees and where to try or jail 9/11 planners, not to mention filing lawsuits to block Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws and filing civil rights lawsuits against Sheriff Joe. Indeed, Holder's Justice Department just filed a massive document demand against Sheriff Joe's office, asking for everything but Joe's secret barbeque recipe. Okay, the recipe may have been requested, too. Hard to tell: small print, many sub-parts,.too many pages to digest.  It might take most state agencies years to satisfy such a demand. Holder wants everything yesterday.

Yes, the federal government has more money than Arizona. An unlimited budget. And Holder is using that bottomless pit to his purposes. Most folks would call such tactics "harassment." Holder calls it "policy." Holder Harassment

Don't Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano have the same boss?

If you can believe it, there are unguarded pedestrian bridges across the Mexican/American border. Don't the Feds know these bridges exist?  Unguarded Pedestrian Bridges.
Here's one of them.

Border agents requested Department of Interior permission to cross onto federal border lands in Arizona to look for illegals and illegal smuggling activities. These federal lands lie in the area that's known as Smuggler's Alley, south and west of Tucson.

Permission denied.

To whom does the Department of Interior report...?

Do you see a pattern here? Doesn't all this anti-enforcement seem a bit...well... orchestrated? Go ahead: Connect the dots.

Politics. Getting elected or re-elected. That's what counts.

What about the bucks, assuming one doesn't care about the human toll? The cost of crime, free health care, Holder's lawsuits and tax revenues lost. Smuggling and the fruits of it are a cash-only trade. No witholding tax, no income tax. And illegal immigrants often operate on a cash basis, too. So not only do we lose tax revenues from many of them; we add to our tax burdens by providing illegals free health care. Have you been to an Arizona Emergency Room lately? Good luck getting in. Doctors in Tucson advise citizens not to even think about doing so.

Considering all this prompts one to ask: Have we lost our understanding of what citizenship means?

The Border This Week

by Ben Small


While the Arizona/Mexico border's been relatively quiet this week, it's not been totally dead.

Just in the last week, President Felipe Calderon held a press conference, claiming the drug lords are taking over some regions of the country, replacing local governments, and charging extortion fees upon local residents -- taxes. Calderon

Meanwhile, over two million dollars of marijuana were collected during a three day period ending just yesterday, involving three different inspections along Arizona's I-19 drug corridor. While one applauds the captures, I wonder how much actually gets through on a given day? Don't take these seizures too seriously. Tons of marijuana are seized each year. But the price for grass isn't rising. Which of course means there's plenty of supply...

Here are the local television reports: $! Million in Pot Captured; $800,000 in Pot Captured; 140 Pounds of Pot Captured

But the plot thickens. Yesterday, Ciudad Juarez police rioted just across the border from El Paso. Seems one group of cops descended on headquarters to arrest a high level investigator determined by the corruption detail to be a pawn of the drug lords. Cops supporting El Bad Guy resisted the arrest, claiming the resistors were the more corrupt -- back and forth, you know -- and a brawl broke out. Over two hundred cops tasering, shooting and sticking each other in the center of the city.
CNN Report: Mexican Police Riot

How would you like to live there, especially when just across the border, you can be safe, cared for, and if you can make it to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, San Diego, Los Angeles or San Francisco, you'll be welcomed as trophy product for a Sanctuary City to display?

Is it any wonder Illegals are fleeing the lawlessness of Mexico for our Homeland?

Guess where they're going.

Reports show Illegals increasingly fear Arizona and attempt to cross the Sonoran Desert heading toward New Mexico, something no doubt New Mexicans will celebrate.

But High Heat Time is coming this week to the Sonoran Desert. The monsoons will die tomorrow. And then comes the relentless heat. July's number for Pima County's desert exposure deaths -- 58 -- came during half a month of monsoons, which provide water and relief from the heat. With the monsoons passing, the desert becomes grim, water gone, temperatures well over a hundred. A furnace. Every breath a water loss. Pima County will see those exposure death numbers rise, as will Pinal, Cochise and Sana Cruz Counties, most of those counties surrounding Pima, just raw, hot desert.

And Janet Napolitano, so fierce about border security as governor of Arizona, even going so far as to demand National Guard troops, but who then changed her mind when she entered the Obama Administration, stopped deportation proceedings this week for an illegal caught committing Identity Theft -- another crime on the increase in the Southwest, often associated with illegals -- evidently because the felon is attending school somewhere in Arizona.

Stay tuned. It's a new week, and our uncontrolled border is sure to bring new headlines...and more dead bodies.

Death in the Arizona Desert: The Untold Story

by Ben Small

We hear about the Arizona-Texas shootings, bombs and other mayhem along the Mexican border, but rarely do we consider another tragic aspect of our failure to secure our southern borders: death by exposure. Last year, from October, 2009 to the beginning of March, 2010, over eighty-five illegals died from desert exposure, an increase of over sixty percent from the year before.

And that was during winter.

One doesn't usually consider death by desert exposure during the winter months. People forget, the desert is dry -- little water available -- and night temperatures can reach well below freezing.

And what about summer deaths, the Sonoran Desert's most treacherous season? From July 1 - July 15 this year, over forty bodies dead from exposure were found in Tucson's Pima County, all recent deaths. Final figures won't be available for Cochise or other counties south of Tucson for awhile.

It takes time to find the stink, and there's a lot of ground to cover.

And this is just death of illegals dealt by Mother Nature alone. These figures don't count drug war victims shot by border patrol officers or by bandits waiting in the hills; it doesn't include those who die during home invasions or on the highways, like inside sweltering smugglers' trucks, vans or eighteen wheelers.


The Sonoran desert lies beneath a relentless sun. Temperatures well over a hundred. And water is sparse. You lose moisture breathing.

Environmentalists stopped the fence project, complaining wildlife wouldn't be free to meander. Evidently, the Feds rate keeping coyotes, rattlers and rabbits happy over saving human lives. The Department of Interior won't allow Border Patrol agents access to some federal forests.

At some parts of what passes for a border fence, a handicapped person could cross.  Crawl or climb, your choice. Or maybe somebody will lift you.


Yup. Death by exposure in the Arizona desert is headed for a record toll.

Imagine yourself in this circumstance: sweltering under a bush, your tongue swollen and black. You struggle for breath. You're withering; you feel yourself desiccating by the moment. There's no relief from the sun's burning grip. Even the winds blow like a blast furnace. You know that your body may never be found, that family may never learn your fate; or, if they left you behind, you know they will always be haunted by guilt. Or maybe a rattlesnake got you and you're wracked in pain, as its poison shuts down and eats your muscular system -- or in the case of the Green Movave -- paralyzes your neurological system, too. 

The death toll from having an insecure border rises each year. In all, we're talking thousands of lives.

And these statistics fail to include the number of illegals rescued from the desert by the border patrol or local ranchers. Those numbers are in the thousands, too, and they go up every year.

Rather than devising means to secure our borders -- the particularly lax Arizona border, especially -- the Obama Administration would prefer to talk Immigration reform and fight in court Arizona's efforts to enforce federal immigration law on its own border.

Does a state have the right to protect itself from those who would invade it?

Why are Congress and Obama doing this? Because they want the Hispanic vote. Simple as that. They'd rather swell the voter rolls with amnestied former illegals than close the border off.

Amnesty means votes, and votes are all that matter. So what if there's collateral damage? So what if some of the people whose votes they're enticing die in their desperate attempts to get here and fall under the Fed's protective umbrella? And so what if the Border Patrol must allocate time and money to the thousands of desert rescue efforts yearly? Consider the manpower requirements associated with our vast borders; the cost of the ambulances and free emergency care.

Talking about a broad Immigration policy that includes some form of amnesty when one cannot secure one's borders just encourages illegal aliens to take the crossing-risk and hazard a long journey through a scorching or frozen desert. The rewards are citizenship, the right to vote and free health care. Heck, cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Fe and Albuquerque offer themselves up as "Sanctuary Cities."

If I were an illegal fleeing Mexico, I'd be tempted to give the Sonoran Desert a shot. Just pack a couple water bottles, eh?

And if Congress passes an Immigration Reform package and the border is still insecure...well, think about it. All we'll accomplish is to encourage a new wave of illegals. We've done this before.

An immigration reform package will do nothing to stop the money, human and drug smuggling operations of the Mexican drug lords. Mexico is under siege and its drug gangs are setting up shop in this country. Mexicans are fleeing Mexico, desperate to escape the daily gang battles, poverty, treachery and corruption.

Our insecure border is costing lives.

We talk about the horrors of water-boarding and Abu Ghraib and GitMo. We say those activities are inhumane, even if conducted against someone who's planning to kill us. Torture, we call these things. But what about leaders who are willing to tempt illegals to cross our deserts, knowing that a large number of them won't make it, that their bodies will rot and become bounty for birds, bugs and four-legged predators?

And why? Because they want the Hispanic vote, of course. Racism from another angle, maybe? Who knows? But is this "change we can believe in?"

It's ridiculous to talk about meaningful immigration reform or amnesty while our borders are woefully insecure. Until we have secure borders, we encourage people to risk their lives, and we give those terrorists who live to strike at the heart of America an avenue to smuggle in their dirty bombs, suitcase nukes and biological weapons. While some of these bad guys may die of desert exposure in the searing sun or unprotected cold, others will survive to carry out their dark, destructive plans. It's just a matter of time...

So maybe our politicians should think less about politics, and more about humanity and protection of the Homeland.

Seems simple enough to me. But then I live in Arizona, and I see and hear about these tragedies every day.

It's time our president stepped up and took control of our border. If, as Eric Holder's Justice Department argued in Phoenix federal court proceedings two weeks ago, Immigration control is exclusively within the province of the federal government, then the Feds should do their job. Instead, however, the Feds are obstructing Arizona from protecting itself, and are threatening to refuse to cooperate in the handling of those illegals Arizona saves or captures. The Dept. of the Interior won't even give our Border Patrol agents access to its borderline forests.

It's all about votes, folks. Notions of humanity and protection of those who are already citizens don't seem to count. If they did, these problems would have been solved a long time ago.


Watch the videos here:

HiddenCameras2

KVOA Report, 7-19-10


KVOA Report, Part 2

Illegal

by Ben Small

By now, surely everyone is aware that Arizona has passed into law a bill making illegal presence in this state a felony. Boycotts in response to this legislation are in process, and demonstrations against Arizona and the law are occurring in various cities across the country.

But what to boycott? Arizona Tea? It's manufactured in the Northeast. The Diamondbacks? Would anybody care? I've been boycotting baseball since the 1994 strike/lockout, whichever -- I don't remember who closed down that season. Baseball lost me then, and they haven't recaptured my interest. Lettuce? How do you know where your restaurant salad came from?

It all seems a bit silly to me. Especially when those who are urging boycotts, for the most part, don't live in Arizona and have no idea what's going on here.

Arizona is being overrun by illegal smuggling. It's everywhere, and the effects of it are being felt throughout Arizona. No doubt you've heard of the murder of prominent rancher Robert Krenze. Krenze had found tons of marijuana on his vast, thirty-five thousand acre ranch and turned it over to the Border Patrol. He'd suffered the destruction of his fences, his cattle and damage to his grounds, not to mention a vast amount of littering. Then last week, a deputy sheriff in Pinal County, just north of Tucson at Case Grande, was on regular patrol when he discovered bales of marijuana and five smugglers. They shot him with an AK-47. The deputy will survive, but the next day, a sweep of the area discovered seventeen more smugglers, all of whom were arrested, three of whom fit the descriptions of those who'd shot the sheriff.

Arizonans see this sort of crime every single day. It's not unusual at all; it's become a part of life in southern Arizona. Streets in my neighborhood have signs erected by the Feds warning of illegal smuggling activity. Drive just about anywhere in southern Arizona and you will see these signs. They're hard to miss. They're large and bright orange.

Both humans and drugs are being smuggled through Arizona. Phoenix has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. Drop houses are common, and the violence associated with these activities is becoming an everyday occurrence. I-19, which runs from Nogales to Tucson, is commonly known as Smuggler's Alley, but these activities extend far beyond interstate 19. Interstates 10 and 8 are also frequent passages for the smuggled goods and people. Arizona has become part of the ongoing Mexican drug lord battleground.

But that's just the side of smuggling commonly reported. What is not reported, except locally, are the number of people killed on the state's highways because of smuggling activities. It's commonplace for a van or bus loaded with illegals to wreck on one of these highways -- usually I-10 -- tossing dead bodies across the roads, medians and berms. One such accident killed twenty-four illegals, another last week killed twelve. Often, other vehicles are involved, as these smuggling vans and buses usually travel at night, sometimes without lights.

Arizona residents are scared, and efforts by the Feds to curb or control the border have failed.  In many areas of the Arizona border region, an illegal can just walk across the border line. Indeed, Robert Krenze's murderer was tracked back to Mexico; he just stepped across the barrier.The Fence Project, which was to build a high, difficult to cross barrier, was stopped by environmentalists and those who want an open border. So many of the areas of the southeastern Arizona border, particularly those areas east of Nogales, have a barrier a cripple could cross without breaking a sweat. Home invasions, destroyed fences and robbers lying in wait for smugglers are on the increase. Homeowners who live along these smuggling routes are finding spent and unfired AK-47 rounds in their backyards, near their kids' swingsets. The border inspection stations send many smugglers through housing districts, moving much of the smuggling activity from the highways to the housing districts around them.

The Feds have been unable to stop the flow. The Border Patrol does what it can, but much of their activity is spent rescuing illegals who are dumb or desperate enough to attempt to walk across the Arizona desert in summer. The Border Patrol rescues numbers not in the hundreds but in the thousands each year in this state. And many of these poor people don't make it; they die in the desert. The death toll is unknown, but bodies are found each and every day, regardless of season.

Ironically, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, demanded the National Guard patrol our borders when she was governor of Arizona. She got no response. But now that Janet's the Homeland Security Secretary, she's changed her mind and refused to bring in the Guard.

No doubt, politics are involved.

The current federal administration seems more focused on attracting Hispanic voters and granting amnesty than they are in protecting our borders. They talk of immigration reform, of a path to citizenship. But how can one have an effective immigration policy if one cannot control one's border? The Feds oppose Sheriff Joe's Maricopa County (Phoenix) policies of sweeping up illegals, claiming he's guilty of racial profiling.  The Administration even went so far as to deny Sheriff Joe the assistance of ICE, those agents who are supposed to be focusing on smuggling.

None of this makes any sense unless one looks at it from the political side.

So, lacking any effective federal response, Arizona's legislature passed a law which many, including myself, think will eventually be overturned. It's a stupid law. Instead of just passing a simple law making an illegal presence in Arizona a felony, the state legislature added nebulous, ambiguous language which guarantees that anyone attempting to enforce the law -- or refusing to enforce the law -- will get sued. Then, faced with near universal  criticism over the bill's language, they amended the statute and made the language worse. The lawsuit risk is so prominent, some county sheriffs have said they won't enforce the law, because they're in trouble no matter what they do.

And sure enough, there will be cowboy sheriff deputies who make dubious arrests. Count on it. Lawyers will flock to the courts filing cases on all sides of the issues.  The law should have been called the Lawyer's Economic Recovery Act.

Why oh why couldn't the Arizona legislature have made the law simple? If you're here illegally, you're here illegally. What does the term "illegal" mean? It means you're not here legally. Simple as that.

But of course, politicians rarely do anything simply.

The legislature did do one thing simply though: They approved driver's licenses as proof of legal entry. How much of a burden is it to produce your driver's license upon demand? Heck, I have to produce mine every time I make a purchase at Best Buy. Indeed, a Hispanic woman in Tucson went before the Tucson City Council Friday and made the same point. She produced her license, and said, "There. How hard was that?" She went on to say she followed the route to become a naturalized citizen. She said she resents those who seek what America has to offer, but do so illegally.

I agree with her, as do most Arizonans. Indeed, while many Arizonans agree with me that the language of the new statute sucks, over seventy percent of the Arizona population agreed with the bill's intention: We must control our borders.

So what are we to do with all these illegals we're going to arrest? Arizona is hurting just like every other state. While Sheriff Joe has no problems adding tents to his Tent City Jail, other counties won't approve that option. One suggestion I liked -- which of course has no chance of passage -- was to dump these illegals at either the California or New Mexico state lines. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Albuquerque have all declared themselves to be Sanctuary Cities. Okay, if these cities want our illegals, maybe we should accommodate them.

Meanwhile, Arizona is a war zone. Gun sales are at record levels, and a new militia has formed and claims it will enforce the laws, patrolling the border armed to the teeth. Now, that's something to worry about. 

The problem is not Mexicans or other Hispanics. You can't live in Arizona without encountering Hispanics. They're everywhere, and by and large, they're hard-working, good people, with family values, and deserving of respect and admiration. The war is not against them; it's against those who are entering our country illegally. And not all of these illegals are Hispanic. Believe it or not, there are a huge number of Chinese illegally slipping across our borders. And it's not unusual to find copies of the Quran spread across the smuggling trails. The porous Arizona border makes for easy access for would-be terrorists, and there are plenty of coyotes who know the routes and will take them across for a fee.

So... while I don't support the language of the new Arizona law, which will be effective late July, I fully support the intention behind it: controlling our border.

But as is often the case, our legislators screwed it up.