U S Border: A War Zone

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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30534

U.S. border: A war zone

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: January 17, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

TUSCON, ARIZ. – The Tucson sector of the Border Patrol has reported that midway through the month of January, drug seizures and apprehensions of illegal immigrants are already up over the same period last year.

The increases aren't nickel-and-dime, and neither are the elevated risks that always follow when these outnumbered and understaffed public servants do their job: Along with higher seizures of drugs and illegals has come numerous incidents of gunplay. Agents in the busy Douglas and Naco areas of the Tucson patrol sector have, as of this writing, been shot at twice already, and firearms have been discovered on suspects and along smuggling trails near the border.

Meanwhile, talk-show host Roger Hedgecock and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin report that Mexican consular officials are doubling as phony Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, in a bid to extract known smugglers of humans and drugs out of the clutches of U.S. law enforcement and back into Mexico, where they can reapply their trade. WorldNetDaily reported the story Wednesday.

One of the ne'er-do-well illegals was likely to be charged with murder, since he wrecked the truck he was using to try to escape local police and Border Patrol officers chasing him at high speed. The accident killed two women who were Mexican nationals. It wouldn't have necessarily been worse if the dead were Americans, but should Americans expect to be run over and killed by illegal aliens and their smugglers?

Meanwhile still, drug enforcement agents, Customs agents and other federal and local law enforcement have uncovered mucho drug smuggling in Big Bend National Park in Texas, about 270 miles southeast of El Paso on the border with Mexico.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Park in Arizona has been given the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous park in the United States because of all the illegal alien and drug-smuggling traffic there. That's the place where 28-year-old Park Service agent Kris Eggle was killed by suspected narco-traffickers in August.

Meanwhile still, U.S. and Mexican officials have found scores of tunnels being used by smugglers to smuggle drugs, people and – some fear – terrorists into the U.S. In fact, officials say, more tunnels have been discovered since December than in nearly all of the previous 10 years.

This is Homeland Security? Obviously, no.

But it is dangerous, both to law enforcers and those they are charged with protecting. And, as the evidence suggests, things are getting worse.

How bad? Soldier of Fortune magazine reports in its January 2003 issue that Belgium weapons maker FN is making available to American police a military-type version of its squad automatic machine gun, the MINIMI. (The U.S. military has designated it the M249 SAW.) Why? As the magazine hinted, some law-enforcement agencies know they would benefit from such a weapon because they are increasingly outgunned by better-financed drug runners and, often, their Mexican army escorts.

Do "average" illegal immigrants really hurt anything? That depends on who is doing the assessment.

According to coastal and inland liberals, no – they're just poor, downtrodden people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Fine – then they should try legal immigration.

According to border state folks and the ranchers and landowners who must constantly deal with the illegal traffic, the "pain" comes in the form of heaps of trash, destruction of fence and livestock, property devaluation and even threats to one's life. One woman in Texas has even had her home invaded by illegals who demanded she accommodate them.

Thanks to the Second Amendment, she and many border ranchers and property owners are still around today to complain about the porous sieve of a border and Washington's criminal inaction to address it, even in these terrorist times in which we live.

Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to "visit the border" and went to San Diego earlier this week. His verdict? He praised a border commuter program that still took eight months to work.

"This administration is committed to a border that is both secure and one that facilitates the exchange of people, information, and goods and services," he hailed.

From one Missouri boy to another, John, get out in the real country if you want to see the damage illegal immigration is really causing.


Looks like the border follies will continue. Except that to real people on both sides of the border dealing with this issue day after day, it's no joke. Shame on this administration and Congress for making it one.
 
Gunfight on the Rio Grande

By Karen Gleason
The News-Herald

Published January 16, 2003

A gun battle erupted Tuesday night beside the Rio Grande between U.S. Border Patrol agents and a group of suspected marijuana smugglers.

No Border Patrol agents were injured, two persons were detained and a large cache of suspected marijuana was found.

The U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector Wednesday released a statement about the exchange of gunfire.

“About (7:50 p.m.) Tuesday, agents were on a Still Watch operation in the Vega Verde area. The agents saw several persons crossing the Rio Grande into the United States carrying large packages. The agents identified themselves as Border Patrol agents, and they started receiving gunfire. The agents returned fire and took cover. No agents were injured,†said Dennis Smith, public affairs officer for the Del Rio Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Though several sources Wednesday said they believed the gunfight’s instigators escaped unscathed as well, no official confirmation of that fact had been made as of press time this morning.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday no federal charges have been filed against the two persons being held in connection with the shooting. The spokesman added it was his understanding that the prosecution of the case would be turned over to the state.

Recovered at the scene of the gun battle were stacks of heavily wrapped packages, almost certainly marijuana. The total weight of the packages is estimated at close to 1,000 pounds. Whatever is inside the tightly wrapped and corded bundles, its former owners apparently considered it valuable enough to kill for.

One river resident said he heard the gun battle as soon as it started.

“It sounded like World War Three,†said Tommy Vick. “I was inside with all the doors and windows shut, and I could still hear it loud and clear. It lit the place up like a Christmas tree.â€

Vick, who lives several lots away from the site of the shootings, is a longtime resident of the “Vega Verde,†literally, the “Green Plain.†It is what locals call that narrow strip of real estate that borders the Rio Grande. On the U.S. side of the river, a line of homes has been built along a winding, badly potholed ribbon of asphalt that parallels the river for several miles.

While the Vega’s isolation makes it an ideal locale in which to experience country living, that same isolation has also made the area a breeding ground for much trouble over the years.

Criminals and delinquents have found it easy, over the years, to cross the Rio Grande into the United States to steal from the residents of the Vega. In 2000, one of the residents, Patrick Bordelon, shot and wounded one Mexican youth and shot and killed a second. Residents of the Vega defended Bordelon’s violence, but the case was prosecuted successfully, and Bordelon went to prison.

Residents also claim they have, in the past, exchanged gunfire with people on the Mexico side of the river.

But Smith said Wednesday such exchanges of gunfire involving Border Patrol agents are rare.

Special Agent Rene Salinas, media coordinator for the San Antonio office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Wednesday the FBI is investigating the case because it involves an assault on federal officers. Salinas declined further comment because the case is considered an ongoing investigation.

Early Wednesday morning, FBI agents began processing the scene of the gunfight. They took measurements, fingerprints, notes, photographs, digital video recordings. Dozens of small orange flags, like the kind sometimes used to mark buried utilities, dotted the backyard of the residence where the gunfight broke out and the backyard of the home next door. The orange flags pinpointed locations where spent shell casings were found.

Members of the Border Patrol’s special response team secured the grounds of the residence. Cradling black military rifles, they looked like they meant business and their welcome was as chill as the winter wind that ruffled the surface of the river, flowing gray as pewter in the background.

A large, drab two-story house squats on the lot. A four-foot-high chain link fence surrounds three sides of the unkempt yard, which dips toward the river behind the house. Between the backyard and the river stands a tall, natural fence of winter-brown carrizo, river cane.

Several cars are parked in the backyard. A black one, parked closest to the river, is riddled with bullet holes, including two through its windshield. Near the two cars lies a deflated gray raft, one of several used to ferry the marijuana across the river.

Across the river, a rolling series of limestone bluffs dotted with cactus and ceniza rises over a strip of riparian woods and more stands of carrizo. It’s a scene that could have come straight from a movie about the Wild West, and it doesn’t take much to imagine it as a smuggler’s staging ground.

A Border Patrol agent clad head-to-toe in olive drab green stands near the site of the shooting and scans the opposite riverbank through binoculars. His mouth is set in a thin, tight line.

On the opposite bank, nothing stirs.

For now.
 
I'm surprised they needed a raft, no more water than is flowing in the poor ol' Rio Grande...

I wonder which smuggler gang it was. The cactus telegraph said Manuel Acosta was working the Del Rio area, after he walked away from the federal prison at Big Spring. (I've had some "interesting" neighbors.)

Art
 
Bill Jordan used to write about everybody getting in pitched battles all the time way back in the good old days. I actually think that the BP is doing quite a bit better after the Klintonistas left. However it's like me first wife told me when I was trying to suck up to her after she filed:" Honey, its just too little too late" . Seal it now. I'll show you how if you can't figure it out!:banghead:
 
Trend rising for crossers to be armed

Well, they have some loons down there putting out water tanks for the illegals, so I guess the next step is to provide them with firearms.

I love the "It's all the vigilantes' fault" whine.


The increase in illegal immigrants with weapons is attributed to their frustration with the patrol's buildup along the border, a border official says.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/local/1_18_03border_guns.html

LUKE TURF
Tucson Citizen
Jan. 18, 2003

As some U.S. citizens take up arms to patrol the Mexican border, the U.S. Border Patrol is reporting more armed encounters with illegal immigrants.

Agents in the patrol's Tucson sector encountered illegal immigrants with weapons just twice in each of the past two fiscal years. But there have been 12 incidents in the current fiscal year, which is less than 4 months old.

Just in the past week, Tucson sector agents have been shot at twice and have confiscated three semiautomatic pistols, said Border Patrol spokesman Frank Amarillas.

"It shows some kind of frustration on their behalf," Amarillas said of the shooters, attributing the frustration to the patrol's buildup along the border.

The weapons trend, which includes knives as well as guns, is alarming both to members of the armed militias that have sprung up near the border and to immigration reform activists.

Jen Allen, co-director of Border Action Network, a border watchdog group, blames the militias for the rising trend of border crossers carrying weapons.

"It's not surprising that there's more people coming across the border armed," Allen, 29, said. "People have heard about the vigilante groups, so there's much more fear of being attacked."
But a spokesman for Ranch Rescue, a Texas-based group that has sent armed patrols along southern Arizona's border with Mexico, said the presence of armed immigrants and drug smugglers is the reason members of Ranch Rescue carry semiautomatic rifles.

"I don't believe anyone in our group would hesitate to defend ourselves," David Cheyney said. Ranch Rescue has not encountered illegal immigrants with weapons in Arizona, he said.
Chris Simcox, publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed and founder of the Civil Homeland Defense, said he has been shot at three times while patrolling near the border.

Simcox, 42, who once stopped wearing his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol because of the negative connotations it brought to his group, now says he carries it everywhere, even into the bathroom when he takes a shower.
"We're getting to the point where something horrible is going to happen," he said.

Simcox said members of his group decide whether they will carry firearms.

Mario Villarreal, a spokesman at Border Patrol headquarters in Washington D.C., said agents have been "ambushed" twice since October while stopping drug loads in Texas, with an agent shot in the leg in one incident.

The last law enforcement agent in Arizona shot by suspected illegal immigrants or drug smugglers was National Park Ranger Kris Eggle, who was killed by drug smugglers in August in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, west of Tucson.
Park Ranger Bo Stone said his rangers wear bullet-resistant vests. They also carry semi-automatic pistols, 12-gauge shotguns and Colt AR-15 rifles.

"I don't think anybody that works down here feels technically safe," Stone said.

The last Border Patrol agent killed in Arizona was Alex Kirpnick, 27, who was shot to death by a marijuana smuggler near Nogales in 1998.

Amarillas, of the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers all of Arizona except the Yuma area, said he wasn't sure of the number of times agents have shot at border intruders. But in at least one case last year, an agent shooting a Mexican national in the buttocks near Douglas, has been confirmed.

Isabel Garcia, a Tucson immigration attorney and immigrant rights activist, said she would question any figures the Border Patrol provided.

She said the agency manipulates statistics to increase funding so it can further militarize the border, which she blames for the increased violence.

"The more you militarize, the more there's a feeling of people needing to be armed," Garcia said.

RECENT BORDER WEAPONS INCIDENTS:

Jan. 9 Border Patrol agents from Nogales arrested a Mexican national with a .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun at a traffic checkpoint.

Jan. 10 Border Patrol agents from Nogales arrested a Mexican national with a loaded .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his waistband.

Jan. 11 Border Patrol agents from Douglas found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun with an abandoned load of marijuana.

Jan. 12 Border Patrol agents from Naco were shot at when a drug smuggler abandoned his vehicle and fled to Mexico. No agents were hit.

Jan. 13 Border Patrol agents from Douglas were shot at from the Mexican side of the border. No agents were hit.

Copyright © 2003 Tucson Citizen
 
But those illegals just want to come here to work, and the mean old vigilantes make it hard to do that, so the illegals have to arm themselves...............................see?

If we just moved out all of the ranchers, Border Patrol and vigilantes there wouldn't be any border problem. :fire:
 
Well the nice part is the Park Rangers get to carry a shotgun, an AR, and their sidearm. The BP guys get to carry a Berreta .40 cal. Oh they qualify with the M-4 as needed, but the powers that be have em keep em locked up in the safe at the station. "Wait, time out, let me run back to the station and get my rifle." Heck of a way to fight a war and defend a border with a handgun. Presido BP station is said to recieve incoming fire from Mexico almost every night.

Oh and when one of the dogs they BP uses decides to bite some illegal attacking his master, they cut his nuts out and put a muzzle on him. :cuss: If anyone needs a cuttin and a muzzle it is some of the folks sending these men and women into harms way with a handgun.

I spent a huge portion of my youth helping my dad running a hunting camp in the South Country near McAllen, I can assure you, we didn't just carry pistols. Want to seal the border, offer a bounty and declare a free fire zone. Put the unemployed to work collecting scalps, but then we are to PC to do that, which means we really don't want to see it stopped.

If you think this isn't a war, head on down to one of the area ranches near Chrystal City, buy it and put in a landing strip, in about six months you will be approached and given a choice, sell the land to the drug gang or die a slow painful death. It is a real pleasant place to live, for the buzzards and coyotes.
 
Well, if anyone is interested in something the country could do that might actually help the situation, here's my 2 cents:

Legalize marijuana. Maybe other drugs, too, but definitely marijuana. We can grow just as much and better stuff right here in the good ol' USA.

No more profit motive. No more marijuana smugglers shooting at anyone. No more marijuana smugglers (period).
It wouldn't solve a lot of the trouble, but it would be a good start.
 
I guess at this point it's fair to ask - What border?




http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20030118-9999_7m18border.html

Mexican troops stray over border





By Dwight Daniels
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 18, 2003

A detachment of Mexican soldiers wearing black ski masks and carrying automatic rifles was confronted by U.S. Border Patrol agents Thursday after the Mexicans strayed into U.S territory.

The Mexicans left the area without the encounter escalating into violence or a diplomatic furor after a soldier told the agents that his unit was part of a special drug-interdiction team, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Ben Bauman said.

The Mexicans were first encountered about dusk Thursday near Tecate in an area known to be frequented by drug traffickers.

An agent had become suspicious of potential illegal activity when he spotted boot tracks some 30 feet into U.S. territory near a barbed-wire fence marking the border, Bauman said.

The agent followed the tracks until he spotted about a dozen uniformed men with rifles taking cover in a brushy area just across the border in Mexico.

When other agents arrived, the Americans confronted the Mexicans, who told the agents that the unit was part of a drug-interdiction team of the Mexican army, Bauman said.

Agents pointed out that the soldiers' footprints indicated they had been in the United States.

The Border Patrol agents reported what had occurred when they returned to headquarters.

Officials contacted Mexican authorities and confirmed that the soldiers encountered were indeed part of a special army unit, according to Bauman.

"The whole situation illustrates the potential for danger on the border," Bauman said.
 
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BP agents ACTUALLY SHOT AT SOMEONE!
Used hot lead to turn back drug smugglers that shot at them first!
When the heck did that "procedure" get in the books?
What's next? They actually arrest a group of illegals and put then in jail for, oh, say 5 years.

Somewhere.......a pig stretches it wings, faces into the wind and prepares to take flight.

S-
 
Tempers are pretty short around here these days.
Folks have had enough and aren't too far away from declaring an "open season".
Click to expand...
Maybe if a few "coyotes" turned up dead, Washington would get off it a$$ and do something!!:banghead:
 
Local rumor here says there has already been some shooting but the incidents are being hushed up.

Maybe these coyotes aren't turning up. There's a lot of rugged back country here. . . . .
 
Bottom Gun,

Shooting by some land owners in deep south Texas has been standard practice for a long period of time. All you find is some half empty water jugs and drag marks. As the economy crunches harder I think you will see an increase in the number of these incidents taking place. It aint real pretty but if implemented on a grand enough scale, it will get the job done, fear of being shot and thrown in the river is a pretty powerful deterrent.
 
Former U.S. Border Patrol Agent Speaks Out
By Anonymous Sierra Times Reader
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/01/20/aranon012003.htm

In response to this article, BorderNews: Armed civilians stir border fears in anti-migrant effort
Mr. Johnson,
I am a property owner in a rural ranch area west of Tucson and 30 klicks from Sasabe, Arizona and the Mexican Border. Protection of property for those who live in these areas has always been through the efforts of armed individuals. The situation the past few years has been a nightmare for Southern Arizona residents who live near Douglas and Naco North due to constant invasions of homes and ranches by masses of illegal Mexican aliens.

Until official retirement, I spent 30 years as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, Aircraft Pilot and Criminal Investigator with DOJ. Through the early years, we controlled the territory until Politics and Carpetbaggers in D.C. dictated open borders policies and mindless agendas which '"hamstrung'" an effective agency. From Presidio, Texas on the Rio Grande to the Tohono Reservation at Sells, Arizona, Mexican Border crossers in a span of twenty years rarely created problems, burglaries were rare as was destruction of property. Politicians from both parties in Congress, in pandering for Votes and Cheap labor and refusing to revamp an inept Immigration Service, created a different caste of border crossers who care nothing for the laws of the U.S. nor property rights, and upon reaching interior cities are basically "home free".

This new wave of illegals realize little will be done if they are arrested, and leave a trash trail that a Blind Agent could follow if they were not hampered by political directives, "hold the line" madness. Hundreds that cross east or west and travel beyond sight of an Agent sitting on an "X " are free to move without intervention.. They cut fences, commit home intrusions, and any number of criminal acts that should be of concern to State Politicians and the President, yet it seems unimportant in D.C.

Representative Tom Tancredo was here with Arizona citizens at Lukeville for the funeral of Cris Eggle, a park ranger slain by AK-47 fire in August, 2002. I was proud to meet my first honest politician, who stood in baking heat with people far removed from his congressional district, to pay " last respects" to a young officer. Our own state representatives could not be bothered or reached for such Border trivia, including John McCain .

Now we have a new reconquista Congressman Raul Grijalva whose concerns and loyalty are to the Mexican Government and goals, and believes U.S. Citizens in high risk border areas should be investigated as Racists, Hate Groups when they take up arms for their own safety as well as their neighbor's.

I know the people of Southern Arizona, long time ranchers , good people who, in years past, would give water or food freely to small groups of " illegals', and assist those in need of help. Illegals crossed the land, with few problems involving property crime. And the Border Patrol responded. Those times are over. Now Cattle tanks are fouled and punctured. Livestock is killed, burglaries, drug runners, rapes and threats are today's reality in a politically correct society condoned by Congress.

An example of politically correct nonsense is a bronze statute, erected against the will of the majority of the people, in the courtyard of downtown Tucson ten years ago. The statue is of Pancho Villa, notorious Bandit, rapist, and murderer whose gang of outlaws terrorized Southern Arizona residents for years on border raids in the late 1800s. I'm sure Congressman Raul Grijalva is proud of that statute as a part of Mexican history, past and present.

Arizona is a "right to carry" weapons state, with many people possessing Concealed Weapons permits. If the government will not protect taxpayers, property owners from constant invasions from Mexico, citizens must rely on their own resources. I love this nation, and spent most of my natural life defending political ideals from Viet Nam to decades on the Border. Bandits, drug runners, and Mexican Military escorting loads is nothing new, yet few news media report the facts nor do they report the real life situation on the borders. Being an armed civilian in a time of need for any person on Arizona's borders is a matter of survival for their family or neighbors.

J. S.
Three Points, Arizona
 
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