Invasion U.S.A. - Border Control Crisis

The situation along the American-Mexican border continues to grow. I cannot imagine why the president and congress refuses to deal with something so remedial. How can we even think of having homeland security and immigration reform when our borders are wide open? The answer is, we can't.

Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush: Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will.

Simcox said Wednesday that he's sending an ultimatum to the president, through the media, "You can't get through to the president any other way," to deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the Arizona border by May 25.
Or, Simcox said, by the Memorial Day weekend Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers and supporters will break ground to start erecting fencing privately.
"We have had landowners approach," Simcox said in an interview. "We've been working on this idea for a while. We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise."
Simcox said a half-dozen landowners along the Arizona-Mexico border have said they will allow fencing to be placed on their borderlands, and others in California, Texas and New Mexico have agreed to do so as well.
"Certainly, as with everything else, we're only able to cover a small portion of the border," Simcox said. "The state and federal government have bought up most of the land around the border. I suspect that's why we'll never get control of the border."
But he said the plan is to put up secure fencing that truly will be an effective deterrent, and to show how easily it can be accomplished.
Simcox gave this description of the envisioned barrier-and-fencing complex:
Start with a 6-foot deep trench so a vehicle can't crash through; behind it, roll of concertina (coiled, razor-edged barbed wire), in front of a 15-foot high heavy-gauge steel mesh fence angled outward at the top.
Behind the fence will be a 60- to 70-foot wide unpaved but graded dirt road, along with inexpensive, mounted video cameras that can be monitored from home computers. On the other side of the road will be a second, 15-foot fence, with more concertina wire on its outside.
"It's a very simple, effective design based on feedback we've had from Border Patrol and the military," Simcox said. "It's a fence that can be built on the cheap, effective and secure."
Simcox said supporters will try to build the fencing with volunteer labor. Surveyors and contractors have offered to help with the design and survey work, he said, and some have said they will provide heavy equipment.
Simcox said those involved in the planning hope to keep costs to between $125 and $150 a foot.
Access to land literally on the border is an issue because so much is state-leased trust property or federally owned, he said.
"You may have to deal with a situation where private property owners erect their own fences and may be faced with the president sending the National Guard to prevent them from protecting their private property," Simcox said.
He said the Minuteman plan is "to keep turning up the heat" until President Bush has to respond somehow.

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I live on a planet called "Earth". I'm not sure what planet Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff lives on, but I'd suggest that he joins us on this one.

Chertoff downplays Mexican military incursions

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff downplayed reports by the U.S. Border Patrol of more than 200 incursions by the Mexican military over the last 10 years, calling them "scare tactics."
While acknowledging the Border Patrol reports of crossings by uniformed troops, Chertoff told reporters in Washington yesterday he believes many of the incursions could have been innocent mistakes, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif.
"I think the stories are overblown," Chertoff said. "I asked the chief of the Border Patrol about it. The number has not increased; in fact, it had decreased a little bit."
In some cases, Chertoff suggested, it could be a matter of Mexican authorities crossing where the dividing line is unclear or criminals in camouflage are mistaken for soldiers.
T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, asserted Chertoff is uninformed.
"Were he to go out there on actual patrol with Border Patrol agents ... and experience what we experience – where you encounter a group of highly trained, very well-armed Mexican soldiers coming across our border, and your closest backup is an hour or more away – I think he would be a lot more concerned about it," he told the Ontario newspaper.
Some Border Patrol agents contend Mexican military officers have been colluding with drug-smuggling cartels.
The Border Patrol has tracked 216 incursions by Mexican military or police forces since 1996, the Daily Bulletin first reported Sunday.
The paper said the highest total was 40 in 2002, while last year there were nine.
Chertoff confirmed there have been about 20 incursions a year in the last decade.
The Homeland Security chief also acknowledged reports of corruption among Mexican troops were true, but didn't see them as significant.
"We do have instances where we have Mexican police or military who have deserted and become involved with criminal activity," Chertoff said. "But we've also had bad cops in the United States, too. It happens."
Emphasizing the collaborative relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, Chertoff called attempts to call the incursions a problem "scare tactics," the Daily Bulletin said.
A spokesman for the Mexican consulate, Rafael Laveaga, denies any Mexican military incursions have taken place.
Pointing out the few times U.S. Border Patrol has accidentally crossed into Mexico, Bonner insisted the incursions were not just innocent mistakes, and he criticized Chertoff for playing down the number.
"For him to say this is only a few hundred - come on," Bonner said. "One is far too many."
As WorldNetDaily reported in February, an American law enforcement officer and news crew in Texas witnessed another armed incursion into the United States by men dressed in Mexican army attire, the second such incident in two weeks.
As before, several men dressed in Mexican military garb appeared to violate the international boundary, in Hudspeth County, Texas, some 50 miles east of El Paso, local affiliate KFOX-TV reported. There, the U.S.-Mexico border is separated only by a shallow stretch of Rio Grande River. The incursion was witnessed by a KFOX news crew and Hudspeth County deputy, photos of which are posted on the affiliate's website.
Mexican officials have said their military is forbidden from traveling within three miles of the border, though U.S. border residents repeatedly have spotted mobile patrols of Mexican military units traversing roads that run directly parallel to the international boundary. Mexico says the armed men crossing into the U.S. are paramilitary forces loyal to drug-smuggling cartels.

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What Jen Rast over at Contender Ministries coined as the "Anti-Christian Litigation Union" or the ACLU, is now going after the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. Guess the ACLU can have another moniker: the "Anti-Constitution Litigation Union". At least the state recognized this and ruled correctly.

ACLU fails to oust Minutemen

The American Civil Liberties Union failed an attempt to remove volunteers with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps from Arizona state land.
Ranch owner Pat King, whose property includes some state trust land she leases, told the Arizona Daily Star newspaper the ACLU officials who instigated the complaint don't care about her.
"So they are not really the American Civil Liberties Union are they? Because they don't give a darn about what has happened to my constitutional rights to property," King said.
King, according to the Daily Star, called the ACLU members misguided, out-of-town youngsters who don't understand what people and drug smugglers have done to her land and the valley.
About 60 ACLU members have been monitoring the Minuteman volunteers since the beginning of a monthlong patrol April 1 south of Three Points, Ariz., on King's private Anvil Ranch.
The ACLU's Ray Ybarra complains the volunteers shine high-powered flashlights on them as they drive by.
But the Minutemen claim the ACLU members have harassed and berated them and interfered with Border Patrol apprehensions.
The president of the Minuteman Arizona chapter, Stacey O'Connell, said the border group is considering legal action.
The paper reported Ybarra contacted the Arizona State Land Department about the Minuteman presence on state trust land without permits.
An Arizona official showed up Monday night to visit the volunteers.
The issue was resolved, according to O'Connell, when volunteers presented valid permits and others promised to get them right away online.
"Nobody was escorted off state land, nobody was asked to leave," O'Connell told the Daily Star.
Ybarra said he heard, via radio communication, the Arizona official telling the volunteers they needed state permits to be on trust land, even with permission from the ranch owner.
But deputy state Land Commissioner Richard Hubbard said the state employee was mistaken. The volunteers had a right to be there because they were invited by the ranch owner to do work in addition to their patrols.
Ybarra, nevertheless, called the events this week suspicious and said he will continue to probe the state permit law.
The ACLU has expressed concerned over "the potential for taking actions and ... attempting to enforce immigration laws."
The Minutemen say, however, they only are reporters of illegal crossings to the Border Patrol.