Desert Invasion - U.S.

Certainly there are many poor people in Mexico, since perhaps half the country lives in poverty. However, the nation as a whole is quite rich — see the documented facts listed below — and could well finance the sort of improvements in education and infrastructure that would better the living standards of all Mexicans. But the Mexican ultra-rich, like telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim shown here, don't like to tax themselves for investment the country badly needs for infrastructure and education, and it helps them greatly that the American taxpayer has been forced to support Mexicans living in the United States.

Every dollar spent in U.S. taxes for social services for illegal aliens frees up additional cash to be sent south as part of the annual remittances which now provide the second highest source of foreign income for Mexico, over $16 billion in 2004. According to the CNN news show Lou Dobbs Tonight (3/21/05), "Remittances, as they're called, are expected to become Mexico's primary source of income this year, surpassing the amount of money that Mexico makes on oil exports for the first time ever."...

In 2002, figures show that there were almost 10 million Mexican-born U.S. residents, having risen from 2.2 million in 1908 and 9 million in 2000. Since Mexico's total population was 100 million in 2000, this means that the equivalent of 9% of the Mexican population had moved to the United States. Hundreds of thousands more Mexicans are on waiting lists for immigrant visas. In 1994, NAFTA went into effect. Some Americans thought that NAFTA would quickly slow immigration. Instead, it continued. It seems that Mexican farmers and farm workers were displaced by giant mechanized farm corporations in Mexico. Many of them went to the U.S. where cheap labor was employed rather than heavily mechanized farming.

Sen. John Kerry yesterday promised an amnesty for most illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years.

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. -- The Border Patrol launched Friday its unmanned drones that use thermal and night-vision equipment to help agents spot illegal immigrants trying to cross the desert into the United States.

The stepped-up surveillance is part of a mission that officials hope will stem the tide of illegal immigrants that have made Arizona the busiest illegal entry point along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico... The two Hermes 450 drones being used in the Arizona project can detect movement from 15 miles up, read a license plate, view a vehicle's occupants, and even detect weapons, officials said... They will fly 56 hours a week and can be used over preprogrammed flight paths or be sent to check out specific destinations.

The drones weigh almost 1,000 pounds, have a 35-foot wingspan and can fly faster than 100 mph. They will patrol at 12,000 to 15,000 feet. They can stay aloft for 20 hours at a time.

...It takes 12 to 18 people to operate and monitor the images sent back by the drones, officials said.

The overall cost of the mission is estimated at least at $10 million, with the government spending about $4 million on the drones... The Hermes 450s, which Israel uses to patrol its frontiers, join a number of unmanned aerial vehicles being used in the United States.

[See private competing technology photographs].

For years, border patrol (search) agents in Southern California have done just that — patrol the U.S. border with Mexico and highway checkpoints, arresting illegal immigrants only near the border.

But now those agents are extending their reach inland, conducting sweeps in cities and arresting hundreds of illegal immigrants in states like California, Arizona and Texas... The [U.S. Border Patrol] agency also points out that crossing the border illegally is a crime.

"ILLEGAL ENTRIES" by 30 year veteran Border Patrol officer John W. Slagle exposes the vulnerability of our southern borders to infiltration by any terrorist who wants access to the United States. Mexican drug rings and 'coyotes' cross our borders at will 24/7. They transport 75 percent of all illegal drugs sold on the streets of America. As for human cargoes, they charge from $1,500.00 to $3,500.00 per client, and as high as $25,000.00 for Chinese and Middle Easterners.

You might be deeply thrilled to know that illegal aliens and legal immigrants alike send $15 billion back to Mexico annually. It's one of the reasons they have 22 billionaires and the lowest income tax, at 14 percent, in Latin America. Why not? They send their poorest and most uneducated into our country and let us pay to educate their children. How many? Estimates range from 1 to 1.5 million illegal alien children are taught on the U.S. taxpayer's backs. Cost per child? The average is $7,000.00 per year and higher...

On average, each illegal alien drops eight pounds of trash while making his way into America. At an estimated one million per year, that means eight million pounds of trash blow around the desert.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is releasing some criminal aliens from federal custody in five southern states because it cannot afford to detain them, according to documents obtained by Government Executive...

The agency [ICE] is budgeted to detain 19,444 illegal immigrants, but typically holds 3,000 additional aliens.. As a result, the agency makes daily decisions on how many aliens it can afford to detain...

Other officials said ICE has to reduce the number of aliens it is holding to comply with its budget limits. "They've been running at 22,000, 23,000 [aliens] every day, so that is tens of millions of dollars more than they are funded for," said a senior Homeland Security official. "You need to start managing those numbers down."

BISBEE, Ariz. — Besieged by illlegal immigrants who jam its emergency room, then disappear without paying, tiny Copper Queen Community Hospital is growing desperate.

The 13-bed private facility lost $800,000 caring for migrants [illegal aliens] last year and $500,000 the year before. At this rate, hospital administrator Jim Dickson predicts he'll shut down in three years, leaving the town of Bisbee without a hospital...

Carondelet Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales lost $500,000 last year. Tucson Medical Center closed its trauma center because of uncompensated care. And University Medical Center in Tucson loses close to $1 million a month in unpaid care.

The century-old Copper Queen sits astride the "Naco corridor", the busiest gateway for illegal immigrants in the nation. Border agents have made 154,000 arrests here this year.

Every day hundreds of immigrants [illegal aliens] set off from Naco... If they get hurt... they usually wind up at Copper Queen. The facility also takes emergency transfers from Naco, which has no hospital.

"The numbers are incredible", said Stephen Lindstrom, medical director...

A study last year by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition examined health-care costs in 28 border counties in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. It found they had lost $200 million treating illegal immigrants that year.

...Arizona is losing $150 million annually caring for undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens]... Congress recently set aside $1 billion to reimburse states for treating illegal immigrants. Arizona will get $40 million annually over four years starting in 2005, about one-quarter of what it actually spends...

An ambulance given to a hospital in Nogales, Mexico, ended up being used by drug dealers to smuggle marijuana into Arizona.

...On Wednesday, U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued 14 undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens], one of whom later died, in a remote desert area about 15 miles west of Eloy near Arizona City. Border Patrol agents believe the group had walked 60 miles after crossing the border illegally and their smuggling guide was probably trying to get them to a highway to meet another smuggler with transportation.

"We see them out here a lot," said Albert Ruiz, 17, who lives near where the [illegal] migrants were found. "A lot of them say, 'Where's Eloy? Where's Phoenix'?'" Drop houses found... Cruising through the city's streets one morning last week, Nolasco pointed out more than half a dozen buildings where police have called in the Border Patrol during the past several months after discovering groups of undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens] being warehoused by smugglers waiting for the right moment to move them north.

In the Minnesota that Fox visits today, Latin American immigrants send an average of $1,877 a year to their home countries, more than that sent by migrants living in Florida, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, according to a 2004 estimate by the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. Mexico was by far the single biggest recipient nation....

Bank officials said they expect to talk about matricula consular, an identity card issued by Mexican consulate offices that enable otherwise undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens] to open savings or checking accounts for sending money back home...

"The main reason we have had such a huge influx of immigration in the last several years is secondary migration," said Garcia, who is based in Minnesota. "They arrive in California and Arizona and Texas and they discover that the supply of their services is already very high, which means they get less pay and they're less welcomed. So they keep on moving north. And when they get here they get paid more and they can send more money back home."

... banks can transfer higher amounts of money more cheaply for people with matricula cards. Wells Fargo allows Mexicans to move as much as $3,000 per day from U.S. accounts to accounts in Mexico for $10... Wells Fargo has opened 400,000 accounts using matricula cards.

The Los Angeles region has become a hub for human smugglers and traffickers and federal officials fighting them say their tactics are becoming increasingly violent...

"It seems that some of the criminal element is looking at the possibility that you can make a lot more money in human trafficking than with drugs, so why not get into it?"

"It is a very big problem," said Dowell, who oversaw the arrests of seven alleged human smugglers in May in Canoga Park, where 70 illegal immigrants [illegal aliens] were found barefoot inside a padlocked 900-square-foot "drop house" that officials said was crawling with cockroaches... A similar drop house was discovered in April in Watts, where 110 people from Mexico, Ecuador and Guatemala were crammed inside a "rancid" dwelling.

Since 2001, the U.S. Justice Department has charged 140 human traffickers nationwide, a threefold increase over the previous three years, and secured convictions of 93 defendants, nearly twice the number of three years ago. Over the same period, the Justice Department has initiated 283 trafficking investigations, nearly triple the number opened in the previous three years.

An estimated 800,000 to 900,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year in an enterprise that generates an estimated $9.5 billion in profits for criminal organizations worldwide.

Typically, an undocumented alien [illegal alien] from Mexico or other Central and South American nations pays a "coyote" $1,500 to $6,000 to be brought across the U.S.-Mexico border. Once in the United States, the individual is lodged in a drop house, often in deplorable conditions. After the ransom is paid, the alien is taken to a nearby airport, and given a one-way ticket to a U.S. destination with a host of fake identification.

In April, two men were convicted of human smuggling in connection with the discovery of 19 Chinese nationals inside a shipping container at the Port of Los Angeles in February. The 19 were charged $40,000 apiece for the trip.

Officials point out there is a difference between "human smuggling" and "human trafficking," which both encompass the illicit movement of people across or within national borders...

"Our own estimates are that 18,000 to 20,000 men, women and children are trafficked across the United States borders as slaves or into slavery,"

Immigrants are filling nearly three out of every 10 new jobs in the rebounding U.S. economy, a development that may dilute the political dividend to President Bush from an election-year recovery, a study released Wednesday concludes.

The report by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center found that workers who are not U.S. citizens claimed 378,496 jobs out of a net increase of 1.3 million from the first three months of 2003 through the first three months of this year.

The share of jobs going to noncitizens [illegal aliens] -- 28.5 percent -- was particularly notable because workers who are not U.S. citizens account for less than 9 percent of all those holding jobs in the United States...

By Lou Dobs, CNN, June 17, 2004;
View video archive

Lou Dobbs (CNN): "...today, indicating that our border with Mexico is still far from secure, nearly 3 years after the September 11th attacks,

The border, it turns out, is not only porous, but it has turned increasingly dangerous - more so than ever, where illegal aliens, desperate to enter this country.

Even so, they're still finding ways to cross the border, almost unimpeded, and they are doing so in staggering numbers. Peter Viles reports."

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ): "We've increased the violence, we've increased the danger, and as a result you have now many more people dying, and sadly, they're mostly women and children, because the males don't go back home to Mexico or Honduras; they stay in the United States and they try to bring their families up there."

Peter Viles (CNN): "For the second time this week, Congress heard troubling testimony portraying a porous and dangerous border with Mexico. Earlier in the week, testimony indicated that Border Patrol agents' hands are tied by bureaucratic policy. Today a portrait of a border deadlier than ever before, for illegal aliens desperate to work in the United States. Fifty-one deaths so far this year, along just the Arizona border."

Peter Viles (CNN): "Also, troubling, this exchange indicating illegal traffic across the border may be much higher than the estimate of one million illegal aliens per year into the United States. It began when Congressman Kolbe said that 155,000 people were apprehended along the Arizona border in the first three months of this year [2004]."

Peter Viles (CNN): "Congressman Kolbe said that 155,000 people had been apprehended along the Arizona border in the first three months of this year."

Rep. Kolbe (to Senator McCain, R-AZ): "That's about right, sir."

Sen. McCain: And they figure about one out of four or five are apprehended?"

Rep. Kolbe: "Uh, that's probably about right."

Sen. McCain: "So, if you extrapolate those numbers, say 150,000 times four, that would be about 650,000 people attempting or succeeding in crossing in just a three month period. 600,000 in the first three months times four - that would be 2,400,000 people in one year."

Peter Viles (CNN): "And that bit of math covers only the Arizona border with Mexico"...

Lou Dobbs: "...Mexican President Vicente Fox is in this country again and he is fighting for the rights of Mexican citizens who live here. During a two-day stop in Chicago, President Fox promised to work with the United States to make it easier for Mexican workers to get work visas and permanent legal status in the United States. But President Fox didn't stop there in his push for Mexican rights - Tuesday President Fox asked his congress to grant Mexicans living in the United States the right to vote in Mexican elections."

Analysis of the latest Census data indicates that Arizona's illegal immigrant population is costing the state's taxpayers about $1.3 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $1 billion per year. The annual fiscal burden borne by Arizonans amounts to more than $700 per household headed by a native-born resident.

The $1.3 billion in costs incurred by Arizona taxpayers is comprised of outlays in the following areas:

* Education. Based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population in Arizona and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Arizonans spend approximately $820 million annually on education for illegal immigrant children and for their U.S.-born siblings.

* Health Care. Uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population is now estimated at about $400 million a year.

* Incarceration. The cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in Arizona prisons and jails amounts to about $80 million a year (not including the monetary costs of the crimes that led to their incarceration).

The unauthorized immigrant population pays some state and local taxes that go toward offsetting these costs, but they do not come near to matching the expenses. The total of such payments might generously be estimated at $257 million per year.

June 16, 2004, Chicago, Illinois. The government of Mexico will not permit violations of the human and labor rights of Mexicans living in the United States, said Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada, stressing that, "we will stand beside every Mexican woman and man in this country, we will defend them against the raids being carried out in the state of California." In the morning, President Vicente Fox held a meeting with Don Michael Randel, the president of the University of Chicago, at which he highlighted this educational institution's interest in research into and the history of Mexico...

He acknowledged Dr. Friedrich Katz for his research into Mexico. In his remarks he said that, "he has also followed closely the delicate process of transition that my country is undergoing today; our struggles to eliminate traces of authoritarianism; to consolidate an efficient democracy; to overcome poverty and discrimination, and to provide all Mexicans with better opportunities in health care, education, employment, justice, and well-being."

President Fox's agenda also included meetings with the mayor of the city of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, with editorial advisors of various Chicago media, and with the president of Whirlpool, Jeff Fetting.

DOBBS: As we reported, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security today held a hearing on the many problems facing us with border security. My next guest testified before the committee today. T.J. Bonner says our borders are no more secure now than they were before September 11th.

BONNER: ...we certainly are in a mess. Morale is at an all-time low and agents are just waiting for other agencies, state and local, to get some money so they start hiring again. When that happens, there will be a mass exodus of border patrol agents.

DOBBS: ...border patrol agents are basically forced to step aside under current policy, and are not even apprehending illegal aliens as they cross the border...

BONNER: That's correct. And it's just amazing. And it's a major source of frustration and demoralization. Agents are forced to sit eight to 10 hours a day in one spot in order not to move from that spot, even if aliens are crossing within yards of them. It's really mind boggling... This comes straight from the top and nobody has signed an order to that effect, but those are the standing orders out there in the field, and if agents violate them, they are subject to discipline.

[DesertInvasion comment: How insane, but to some people, it makes perfect sense. There are no numbers to document. Therefore, it makes the agency look good on paper.]

DOBBS: ...what in the world are border communities -- how are they responding to these orders and to basically a sweep of the hand by the border patrol inviting illegal aliens in?

BONNER: It's not just the border communities, Lou, it's every part of America, because illegals don't camp out right at the border after they make an entry. They are heading to the heartland of America, to take jobs away from American citizens.

DOBBS: ...Illegal aliens once apprehended are... issued an order to appear before a hearing, but in point of fact, no one is following up to make certain that occurs, and in fact it doesn't...

BONNER: Probably, 90 to 95 percent of the people who are issued to show cause to appear, abscond, they never show up. And we don't even require a bona fide address. We have no way to verify it in the first place, but we don't even require it.

...I don't know what it's going to take to wake these people up. To wake up, not just the Congress, but to wake up America, as to what's going on. Because this is not just an issue of economics of people coming across to take jobs, mixed in with that could well be a number of terrorists. So it's clearly a matter of homeland security...

Has the “Bush Betrayal”—the touting by President Bush and Congress of some form of illegal alien amnesty under the guise of a “border security” program—actually enticed more illegal aliens to crash our border with Mexico in 2004?...

The numbers were released with little fanfare by the DHS on May 28, 2004. The narrative of the report tells the tale of a massive influx:

“The U.S. Border Patrol made 135,468 apprehensions along the southwest border during April 2004, an 80 percent increase when compared to April 2003. Voluntary returns [of Mexican nationals to Mexico] conducted by Border Patrol agents increased by 79 percent from a year ago to 125,561. For the first seven months of fiscal year 2004, apprehensions were up 31 percent and voluntary returns were up 28 percent compared to the same period in fiscal year 2003.”...

Compared to the seasonally adjusted apprehensions (apparently taking the illegal aliens’ travel patterns into account), the 2004 data shows a massive spike in apprehensions...

Let’s get something straight here.

As long as the DHS keeps releasing illegal aliens from detention, as long as the DHS does not fully implement the summary removal provisions in Immigration Act Section 235(b), and as long as the permanent amnesty buffet of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Immigration Court system still exists . . . there will always be a benefit for illegal aliens entering the United States.

[Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff] Larimer was part of an eight-man Cochise County Sheriff's Department taking part in Operation United Stance, a mission established by Sheriff Larry Dever to work with the U.S. Border Patrol to stop illegal immigrants and associated vehicle traffic in the growing rural populated areas...

"We want to put pressure on them. With enough pressure, they will move out of the populated areas," said Tomlinson, who heads the department's Bisbee District.

Two off-duty Border Patrol agents were found dead on the Tohono O'odham Nation early Friday morning.

The fire charred 180 acres in the Coronado National Memorial as of 7 p.m. on Wednesday, burning into the night as fire crews worked to contain the blaze...

The Montezuma Fire is the third blaze in the Huachuca Mountain area this fire season.

In late May, the 5-acre Middle Fire burned on the western side of the mountains. An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Concepcion Solis-Reyfa, pleaded guilty to starting an unattended campfire. She was sentenced in a Tucson courtroom Wednesday to 90 days in jail.

Last weekend, the human-caused Paloma Fire burned 40 acres in the Canelo Hills west of the Huachuca Mountains.

DOUGLAS - In what appears to have been a retaliation by Mexican drug smugglers, a man's home was shot up and a travel trailer he used for storage was set on fire Wednesday morning.

Humane Borders, the Tucson-based private organization that places the blue barrels filled with water and marked by flags atop 20-foot poles along desert paths favored by illegal entrants, plans to have as many as a dozen new stations south of the border in projects involving partners from the United States and Mexico.

Further, two more of the humanitarian organization's water stations have been placed on Bureau of Land Management land less than 30 yards from the border along the same stretch of land where 29 illegal entrants died last year...

"We looked for areas with the highest flow of people," de la Rosa said.

"Obviously the driest, hottest areas with the longest walks are in the Altar desert at Sasabe, but the potential for problems here is very high...

Water stations on federal land on the U.S. side of the border have the tanks refilled daily by volunteers under an agreement that includes several stipulations, including restrictions on what Humane Borders can say publicly about the stations and their location.

"I have a moral obligation to provide water to these people," Hoover said. "If they (BLM) doesn't like what I say, they can yank the permit." ...He said the first water station on federal BLM land went up a little more than a month ago.

"...I'm anticipating we're going to see a whole bunch more migrants coming through Cochise County this year."

He said the first water station on federal BLM land went up a little more than a month ago. It was dispensing more than 50 gallons of water a day within the first week, said Hoover...

Glenn Spencer, founder of Sierra Vista's American Border Patrol, said... the placement of water stations is the clearest evidence yet that Humane Borders and other American humanitarian organizations are aiding and abetting Mexico in its effort to invade the border... "That means these people are traitors."

[See pictures]

The millions of illegal aliens working in the U.S. don't just happen into jobs. Middlemen make it their very lucrative business to put them there.

By the Numbers:
$7 billion - What human smugglers around the world pull in every year.
10,000 - The annual number of people from China's Fujian province who move to New York City illegally.
$1 million - The per-month take in bribes by a border patrol agent at the San Ysidro port in San Diego, for helping 1,000 illegals sneak into the United States.
4% - The fraction of illegal aliens apprehended crossing into Texas and prosecuted.
$9,000 - What a coyote can earn in 2 days leading 15 people.

A federal indictment for trafficking in illegal migrants still stands against Petr Pospisil, a Czech-born illegal immigrant who ran a job-placement ring for mostly other eastern Europeans, and showed monthly profits of $100,000. Then there is Cheng Chui Ping, known as Sister Ping, who is cooling her heels in a cell in Brooklyn, New York and facing charges of smuggling illegal migrants into the U.S. Sister Ping is believed to have earned more than $30 million over 15 years of shuttling thousands of people from her native Fujian province in southern China to the promised land,

Hispanics have a well-worn path into the U.S.--so-called coyotes conduct them across the border, a $500 million-a-year business--and rely on other intermediaries once they're in the States to find housing and jobs.

Some 25,000 people make the trip by boat to the U.S. from Fujian province every year, each illegal paying an average $60,000 for the illicit transit, says Ko-Lin Chin, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University.

Is NAFTA really "the epitome of economic freedom," as the May 23 online introduction to "NAFTA: Road to Riches" states?

For the past seven months, more than 30 individuals representing more than 10 local organizations have been studying the impact of NAFTA and other international trade agreements on Tucson.

The findings of this collaboration, the Community Impact Review, tell a different story.

The impact of trade agreements on health care, food, housing, education, utilities, laws in our community and employment has been, at best, a mixed blessing.

Some of the clearest disappointments are found in the employment sector, both in Mexico and the United States.

The AFL-CIO observes: "Most American workers have not benefited from global integration. Real wages have stagnated or declined for the majority of American workers."...

The question remaining is for whom does NAFTA epitomize economic freedom? The average Tucsonan or Sonoran, or perhaps a multinational corporation?

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot at 11 times on a road south of Sierra Vista during a string of smuggling-related incidents but escaped injury, authorities said.

On Wednesday morning, the unidentified agent was following a truck that had a felony alert on it from Bisbee police, who wanted to question the driver...

As the agent approached this truck, occupants fired 11 shots with an assault rifle and a handgun.

As the agent tried to head for safety, a fifth pickup deliberately slammed his marked patrol car, then fled into Mexico...

Agents seized 325 pounds of marijuana from the abandoned trucks.

...death brings the total known migrant deaths in Southern Arizona to at least 85 since October

U.S. plans to beef up its border force in Arizona by June 1 have fallen short with less than half of the promised 260 more agents on the ground and no drone planes in the sky, a visiting U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said Wednesday.

Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of border and transportation security for the Department of Homeland Security, also said the federal initiative will cost substantially more than the $10 million initially estimated.

So far, only 110 agents have been added to the Arizona border, and the $4 million unmanned aerial vehicle program is tied in up in jurisdictional and legal battles, he said.

Dozens of undocumented immigrants were put back on the streets here in the Valley - by the officers who caught them. Those officers say they had no choice but to let them go... When U.S. Immigration can't pick up undocumented workers [illegal aliens], DPS has no choice but to let them go with brief directions.

...A group called the Ark of the Covenant has been assembled by members of pastor John Fife's Southside Presbyterian Church as well as volunteers from other churches and organizations throughout the country. They are setting up camps in Arivaca, Douglas and Why. Volunteers from an international organization Christian Peacemaker will staff the Douglas camp. Students from Colorado College in Colorado Springs will operate the camp at Why. Other organizations committed to aiding immigrants and saving lives are involved.

It is clear that this service is needed. Despite a $10 million Arizona Border Control Initiative, more crossers have died so far this year than last. As of Monday, 84 had died since Oct. 1, which is the start of the federal government's fiscal year. As of July 10, 2003, 72 immigrants had died. It is only June and already we have 12 more cumulative deaths than we had last year in July....

Increased enforcement has also led to increased reliance on border smugglers who today charge as much as $1,800 per illegal immigrant. Smugglers have created two major staging areas, one at Agua Prieta across from Douglas and at the Northwest Sonoran town of Altar, about 50 miles south of Sasabe. Both municipal economies are geared almost exclusively to abetting illegal immigration....

...Customs officers have seized nearly 17-hundred pounds of marijuana that was concealed in a shipment of honeydew melons from Mexico...

In the past nine years the cash that immigrants send from the United States back to their home countries has almost doubled, but the Bush Administration is planning to use the upcoming G-8 summit to discuss ways to increase the outward flow of cash...

The study, based on a survey of 3,800 Latin American immigrants living in the United States conducted by Bendixen & Associates, found that legal and illegal immigrants send a combined $30 billion annually to their home countries. Mexico alone receives $13.3 billion a year...

A January 2000 study by J. Edward Taylor, University of California, Davis, found that some U.S. taxpayer money is finding its way into remittances... households that received Social Security or unemployment insurance were 10 to 15% more likely to remit, and their monthly remittances were $150 to $200 higher than those of households not receiving non-means-tested public transfers."

An Iranian man recently convicted of drug trafficking, is also suspected of money laundering and smuggling people from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Jordan into the United States. According to federal court documents, Mehrzad Arbane also told a former associate turned government informant in October of 2001 that he "may have smuggled two of the hijackers who flew the planes into the towers in New York on September 11, 2001."...

terrorist organizations are becoming more effective in the ways that they reach the U.S. "We know they are associated with drug smugglers to make money for the jihad - but even more alarming would be if they are piggy-backing on the drug smugglers' networks to facilitate getting their people, materials and possibly even weapons of mass destruction into the country.

At the bottleneck of human smuggling here in the Sonoran Desert, illegal immigrants [illegal aliens] are dying in record numbers as they try to cross from Mexico into the United States in the wake of a new Bush administration amnesty proposal...

After a four year drop, apprehensions which the Border Patrol uses to measure human smuggling are up 30 per cent over last year along the entire southern border, with 660,000 people detained from Oct. 1, 2003 through the end of April, 2004, Federal officials said...

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 54 illegal entrants from Mexico being kept in a safehouse in Douglas.

Border Patrol agents caught 104 illegal border crossers early Tuesday soon after spotting three vehicles speeding across the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.

The money that immigrant workers [illegal aliens] send back home in dribbles of about $200 a month, grows into a $30 billion torrent of cash so big it surpasses all other forms of foreign capital exchange in Mexico and Latin America, a new study shows.

At $9.1 billion, immigrant workers [illegal aliens] in California, with 5.3 million Latin American adults, send the most money back home, according to the Inter American Development Bank, which released a state-by-state breakdown Monday.

Rounding up the top five were: New York at $3.6 billion; Texas at $3.2 billion; Florida at $2.4 billion; and Illinois at $1.5 billion.

Arizona, with just more than 533,000 Latin American adults living in the state, ranked ninth in the study. It showed that about 42 percent of immigrant workers here sent $606 million back home...

The study found that some of the most recent immigrants to the U.S. from Latin American countries are settling in states not traditionally seen as immigrant destinations - like Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. More than 1 million immigrants [illegal aliens] living in those states sent more than $2.2 billion back to Latin America in 2003.

The recent immigrants [illegal aliens] in those Southern states averaged more than $2,600 in remittances per year while older, more established immigrants [illegal aliens] sent about $1,132 a year back home.

Terry said one of the reasons for the lesser amount going back home from more established immigrants [illegal aliens] is that families usually are reunited in the United States.

Last year, the flow of remittances from Mexicans living in the U.S. to relatives in Mexico totaled more than $13 billion, said Florencio Zaragoza, president of Fundacion Mexico, a Tucson-based organization that promotes the interests of Mexican citizens living in the U.S.

U.S. Border Patrol agents seized 1,795 pounds of marijuana worth about $1.4 million during the weekend...

... agents responded to a Tohono O'odham Police Department report of a pursuit involving at least five vehicles suspected of being stolen..

Read the complete interview along with photographs.

The multiagency investigation revealed another wrinkle in the borderland drug trade - traffickers impersonating police to rob other drug smugglers.

Adding to the growing concern for law enforcement agencies is that bands of robbers hitting homes they think are being used to hide loads of drugs sometimes target the wrong house, invading the homes of innocent people, often violently, Valenzuela said...

When the U.S. Border Patrol launches its two new remote-controlled, camera-equipped aerial vehicles later this month to help in the search for illegal border crossers, it won't be the first border watch group to do so in the state.

American Border Patrol, a private group based in Cochise County, recently marked a year of unmanned aerial vehicle patrols near Palominas by adding night-vision cameras to them.

Glenn Spencer, head of American Border Patrol, says the arrival of pilotless surveillance is a good move for the agency...

The Hermes 450 that will be used by Border Patrol is capable of flying at 18,000 feet. It can zip along at over 90 mph and remain aloft for nearly 20 hours while carrying a payload of more than 200 pounds.

But at $2 million per copy, the Border Patrol might not get enough of the drones to have a significant impact in the 300 miles of border the agency's Tucson sector covers...

American Border Patrol's Border Hawk - with only a 9-foot wingspan and weighing less than 17 pounds - is tiny compared with the nearly 33-foot, 400-pound Hermes 450.

But the oversized model airplane, working in tandem with ground sensors, has in the past year flown dozens of test and operational flights along the border. On several occasions, the camera has documented "suspected border intruders" as they've moved along the San Pedro River and Huachuca Mountain corridor west of Naco...

Nearly $250,000 has been spent in the UAV development project that has included several versions of the aircraft and payload by Border technologies Inc., a private enterprise that has spun off of the American Border Patrol's UAV effort.

At about $30,000 per copy, American Border Patrol could field a system of up to 100 planes, complete with control platforms and sensors, for less than the cost of the two Hermes 450 aircraft...

...Spencer remains convinced that his group's work is important and can help the Border Patrol do a better job.

"We have demonstrated that a low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle can be used to patrol the border and find suspected border intruders," he said. "Beyond that, we've created a means for an independent assessment of the problem. We're able to put the images up on the Internet to give an independent assessment directly to the American people of the effectiveness of our border patrol."

[See pictures]

"In the old Border Patrol days a few dozen might try it on a given night. Now, in a zone of few square miles, in effect a no man's land between the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, USA, they came. Sometimes 10,000 per week...

"And in those canyons lurked Tijuana bandits and cutthroats who fed off the pollos as they crossed the frontier in the night. ... Aliens were ambushed, robbed, raped, murdered, occasionally within screaming distance of United States officers at the land port of entry."

That was a true-to-life horror story at the U.S.-Mexico border two decades ago, as the celebrated author Joseph Wambaugh documented in his 1984 bestseller, "Lines and Shadows" (Bantam).

And it continued unabated until 1994, when Operation Gatekeeper was launched... entailed the construction of solid steel fencing as well as stadium-style lighting along a 14-mile corridor, from the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Since the border fence was completed, the number of illegal aliens apprehended along that 14-mile stretch... has fallen more than 80 percent. The ambushes and robberies and rapes and murders... were reduced nearly to nil.

Yet... the Border Patrol apprehended more than 100,000 illegal aliens last year here in the southwest corner of the United States.

...more than a few hailed from countries of concern, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan.

That's why it is so vital to national security that the Border Patrol complete a project to triple the fencing along the 14-mile corridor, to further fortify the U.S.-Mexico border against foreign infiltrators who mean this nation harm...

LUKEVILLE... Nearly everyone knows the kids are coming across from Sonoyta, Mexico, to go to school in the United States. Lukeville's official population is 65, but according to Ajo Unified School District records, 97 students board the buses here.

"The school district is looking the other way out of convenience because they get (an allotment) from the state," said Grant Peterson, 54, a resident of Ajo, a town some 40 miles north where the children are bused to school. "I hate to see kids deprived of an education, but I also hate that it's on taxpayers' backs. Their parents aren't paying property taxes..."

The estimated annual cost to the state, at roughly $4,500 to $5,000 per child, is about $500,000, including transportation... In a crackdown during the 1999-2000 school year, Nogales school officials found about 100 children who lived in Mexico on attendance rolls.

...The contrast between mainstream news sources and Internet news sites is astounding, especially as it pertains to the topic of immigration.

I am convinced that immigration, legal and illegal, is the most deadly threat to the United States... These facts will rarely be presented by the mainstream press...

Bush’s proposal for illegal alien amnesty and increased legal immigration has caused a huge increase in illegal immigration across the border with Mexico. The Mexican government is encouraging this and the Mexican army and police routinely violate our territory while protecting and escorting illegal aliens and drug dealers. A recent article reported that:

“The U.S. Border Patrol told The Associated Press that detentions jumped 25 percent to 535,000 in the six months ending March 31 compared to a year ago.

“Near Sasabe, a town bordering the Arizona desert that's the busiest illegal border crossing area, an average of 2,000 people arrive daily.”

Border Patrol agents caught a group of 118 illegal border crossers in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument shortly after midnight Tuesday...

People in the group told agents that smugglers had brought them through Sonoyta, Sonora, at the westernmost edge of Pima County and that they were headed to Phoenix and Los Angeles...

In the second incident, bleached, skeletal human remains were found Sunday south of the Tohono O'odham village of Gunsight.

ALTAR, Sonora - Mexican nationals crossing illegally into Arizona are dying at nearly three times the rate of last year - the deadliest year on record - in part because their anticipation of amnesty has created a spike in the number of people moving across the border.

More than 100,000 more illegal entrants have already been arrested in the deserts of Southern Arizona since Oct. 1 than in the same period a year ago...

The bodies of 61 people have been found in Arizona's desert around Tucson since Oct. 1, reports from the Mexican government show. For the same time last year, there were 21 known deaths.

Bodies have been found from the border near Nogales to as far north as Marana, 75 miles away...

...apprehensions jumped 60 percent to 277,000, said Rob Griffin, spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. The surge is happening in all parts of the sector and accounts for more than half of the 525,000 arrested along the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

The Border Patrol is reacting by bringing in two drone planes, four more helicopters and 290 more agents to better control the border as part of a border initiative that will be fully implemented by June 1 and last through the summer...

Antonio Manriquez, a coyote in Altar, ...who has worked the Altar-to-Sasabe corridor as a smuggler for two years...

"Sasabe is an easier place to cross through than the west because there is less sand to wade through," he said. "There is shade, trees and one can hide more easily. But we can move through Sonoyta (Sonora), certainly."

He and other smugglers will raise the price to cross migrants. Right now, a Mexican will pay about $1,500 for the trip; Manriquez says he will be charging as high as $2,500 once summer begins.

Another change in tactics is setting up safe houses in Sonoyta and Sasabe and moving small numbers of people across, he said. Safe houses, common in Phoenix, are used to hide large numbers of smuggled migrants before moving them to another city.

Smugglers are also gathering migrants and selling them to other smugglers even before the people cross the border...

Mexican officials predict the increase in enforcement in Arizona is going to push the flow of migration out toward the Sonoyta, Sonora, area where the western edges of Pima County meet Mexico and east toward Coahuila, Mexico, south of Big Bend, Texas...

In Sasabe, Grupo Beta agents say they have counted 56,000 people riding in on the 10- and 15-passenger vans - double last year's numbers, said agency commander Carlos Amador Zozaya Moreno.

Recent press reports say that illegal immigration is skyrocketing since President Bush announced his amnesty plan. For example, World Net Daily reported, "U.S. Border Patrol officials report a 15 percent increase in the use of fraudulent documents at the world's busiest land border crossing [San Ysidro]."

... The report also said, "More than half of those caught using phony documents say the president's offer of de facto amnesty motivated them to attempt to sneak in the United States."

A Washington Times report said basically the same thing: "The number of illegal aliens being apprehended on the southwestern border has jumped 25 percent in the first three months of 2004 compared with last year, and some are blaming President Bush's immigration proposal in January for enticing immigrants across the border."

The Times quoted Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, as saying, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you the president's speech was the catalyst for lots of folks to make their way north and try to get into this country in order to get what they accurately believe to be amnesty."

In two Arizona sectors, Yuma and Tucson, illegal immigration is up 60 percent and 51 percent, respectively. Apprehensions are up 222 percent in the Yuma sector alone. In fact, six of the nine southwestern sectors saw increases compared to last year....

The television news media bring us daily, graphic reports from Iraq, where valiant Americans are battling danger, death and destruction of property. So why don't we get coverage about similar dramatic and scary confrontations taking place on the U.S. border?

The compelling truth about the danger and devastation on America's southern border is crying out to be told. Americans need to hear from the likes of Erin Anderson, whose family homesteaded in Cochise County on the Arizona-Mexico border in the late 1880s.

Ms. Anderson says these American pioneers can't live on their own property any more because it's too dangerous. They can't ranch it. They can't sell it... It isn't safe to go on their own property without a gun, a cell phone, and a two-way radio. Their land has been stolen from them by illegal aliens while public officials turn a deaf ear.

Cochise County in the Tucson sector is the major smuggling route for illegal aliens and drugs, and literally thousands cross every night. The Border Patrol admits to apprehending one out of five illegals, but many think it's only one out of ten.

The number of illegal aliens apprehended on the southern border jumped 25 percent in the first three months of 2004 compared with last year. In Tucson the increase was 51 percent, in Yuma, it was 60 percent.

The news of President Bush's amnesty proposal spread like wildfire as far south as Brazil. After Border Patrol agents reported that the illegals said the amnesty proposal had prompted them to come, U.S. agents were told not to ask the question any more.

... American landowners watch in horror as their lands, water troughs and tanks, and animals are destroyed. The daily trampling of thousands of feet has beaten the ground into a hard pavement on which no grass will grow for the cattle.

Places that the illegals use as layover sites, where they rest or wait for the next ride, are littered with mountains of trash, garbage, open latrines, and plastic bags, diapers and wrappers of all kinds. When indigenous wildlife and cattle eat the plastic and refuse, they die, so the residents try to clean up the sites as often as they can.

The large number of discarded medicine wrappers indicates the prevalence of disease among the illegals. It is estimated that 10 percent of all illegals are carriers of Chagas, a potentially fatal disease that is widespread in Central America...

Other suspicious items picked up by local residents include Muslim prayer rugs and notebooks written in both Arabic and Spanish. These items came from OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) and a subcategory called Special Interest Aliens, who are illegals coming from terrorist sponsoring countries...

Illegals fly or take a bus from anywhere in Mexico or Central America to an industry town like Altar in the northern region. They are driven to the Arizona border, walk a few miles across the border, and then are picked up by shuttle buses which take them north to Tucson or Phoenix...

...On Tuesday, Lizabeth Ramon de Harvey, who identifies herself as a Latina activist and who sits on the [Phoenix Police] department's advisory board for Hispanic issues, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the illegal entry into the United States of two undocumented youths [illegal aliens] who had recently been deported to Mexico...

SELLS, Ariz. — Each day, at least 1,500 illegal Mexican immigrants cross a makeshift border into southern Arizona’s Tohono O’odham Indian Nation.

Tribal Police Chief Richard Saunders is responsible for the area the size of Connecticut, and in March alone his officers and federal Border Patrol (search) agents captured more than 16,000 illegal immigrants. But at least that many got through without being detected.

So far this year, nearly 20,000 pounds of marijuana and an unspecified amount of narcotics have been seized. Agents believe that’s just a small fraction of what’s getting across the border. The tribe is currently spending half its federal money on border security...

this 75-mile border on Native American land [is] wide open. The 69 police officers and few border agents just aren’t enough to stop the flow of people coming in...

While Washington is focused on finger-pointing over responsibility for 9-11, some of the 100 members of the Houston Task Force on Terrorism say Mexico is not fully cooperating on preventing the next jihadist attack on the U.S...

Some of the information coming from Mexico indicates serious preparations by terrorists to cross the border with well-designed missions. Intelligence sources say the quality of information filtering through the Mexican government is often compromised by internal struggles within the Mexican drug cartels or by corrupt customs and police officials.

A task-force source in El Paso said the lack of cooperation from Mexico has resulted in few cases where U.S. authorities were able to intercept infiltration attempts by Arab nationals. In one case, two years ago, a number of Iraqis tried to cross the border and were arrested thanks to a tip from Mexico. But that kind of cooperation is the exception rather than the rule, the sources say.

One task-force source said it is only a question of time before the U.S. pays the heavy price of another major terrorist attack as a result of the breakdown in cooperation between the two countries...

Counterterror experts monitoring the Central American scene are concerned with news that so-called youth gangs active in Central America are now moving north into Mexico. The youth gangs, known to be among the most ruthless street criminals in that part of the world, prey on prospective illegal immigrants. Some indications from Honduras and Guatemala suggest that gangs known as Mara-18 and Salvatrucha are already active in the Mexican state of Chiapas, stretching their activity to Tijuana close to the U.S. border.

A number of Mara-18 members are known to have ties with drug dealers, including those identified with some of the most radical Islamic jihadists.

Summary by American Patrol: In a stunning news broadcast, NBC finally admitted that illegal aliens are flooding into the United States in record numbers. NBC reported that illegal aliens Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) are not deported but released into the U.S. with an order to appear for a hearing (few do).

HEBBRONVILLE...Stemming from an incident that occurred last year at a ranch south of town, Hebbronville, the Jim Hogg County seat, is in the midst of a national controversy on immigration, after a local ranch owner recruited members of Ranch Rescue, an armed civilian border watch group, to patrol his land.

Two Salvadoran immigrants claim they were threatened with death by the ranch owner, Joe Sutton, illegally detained by Ranch Rescue members and that one of the immigrants was pistol-whipped by Casey Nethercott, an Arizona resident and member of Ranch Rescue...

"I know what’s going on and there’s nobody in my government that’s able to do anything about this," [rancher] Sutton said. "I truly don’t have any rights on my own land."

Sutton said he’s had chicken and cattle slaughtered, water pipes broken and fences cut from immigrants crossing his land in an attempt to evade the Border Patrol checkpoint...

Every other morning, Bud Strom begins a ritual of life on the Arizona border, mounting his horse, Bandit, and traversing the mesquite and grassland of his 1,000-acre cattle ranch in Hereford to look for barbed-wire fencing broken by border crossers...

"The border is so porous that we probably get a thousand people a week coming through the ranch — it's a sieve," said Mr. Strom, 72, whose property sits on the Mexican border about 95 miles south of Tucson. "They're all just looking for a way to head north through the mountains."...

American and Mexican officials agreed in February to explore the repatriation plan, which is similar to a program that was scrapped in the mid-1990's...

The vast majority of migrants caught trying to cross the border illegally are quickly returned without being prosecuted or imprisoned. In Arizona, for instance, federal prosecutors brought charges last year against only about 3,000 of some 400,000 people caught...

The vast majority of migrants caught trying to cross the border illegally are quickly returned without being prosecuted or imprisoned. In Arizona, for instance, federal prosecutors brought charges last year against only about 3,000 of some 400,000 people caught...

Arizona has recorded a 34 percent jump in the past six months. Federal officials say tightened security in areas like Southern California and Texas has pushed smuggling rings to Arizona, which now accounts for about 40 percent of all illegal entries. The shift to Arizona has brought with it a sharp increase in violent extortions and drug seizures as well as the deaths of dozens of migrants left in the desert...

Mr. Strom, the Hereford rancher, said that sometimes when he encountered migrants on his land, some from as far away as Iraq or Japan...

More than 1,500 immigrants [illegal aliens] tramp across the Tohono O'odham Nation [in Arizona] every day, making it one of the busiest illegal entry points in the country. So far this year, 27,130 people have been arrested in this remote desert, nearly half the number caught in the much more populated San Diego area... federal agents have seized a staggering 179,300 pounds of narcotics since October...

The reservation, roughly the size of Connecticut, shares a 75-mile border with Mexico that includes 160 illegal crossing points. In 36 spots, there are no barriers at all...

"The Tohono O'odham Nation sits in the busiest corridor of illegal immigration in the nation," said Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame...

The Tohono O'odham Nation sits in the middle of the Tucson border area, the busiest in the country. Last year, agents made 347,263 arrests; the next closest was the San Diego section, where authorities nabbed 111,515 illegal immigrants.

In just one morning earlier this month, Border Patrol officers caught 641 people on the reservation. They later removed 81 bedraggled immigrants [illegal aliens] hidden in a truck bed near the tribal capital of Sells.

Last year, 69 people died crossing Indian land. No one knows how many got through.

Roger Applegate, who heads the U.S. customs office in Sells, said his unit made up to 70% percent of all the drug busts in the Tucson area. "It's the most popular port of entry," he said. "Last year we did 127,000 pounds of marijuana; this year we are at 103,000 pounds and we aren't even halfway through the year."..

... said Manuel Osequeda, 43. "Now you have to deal with houses being broken into, vehicles stolen. I keep three rifles loaded at all times and carry a pistol with me. I stay awake at night to guard my family. My kids want to play outside, but you don't know who is out there. A drug dealer? A child molester?"

... Oliver Smith responds to a quiet knock on the door by charging out of his careworn home with a loaded pistol... "I check my fence every morning — it's cut," he said, as his pickup rumbled along a deeply rutted dirt road beside the border. "I check it at midday — it's cut. I check it at night — it's cut."

... the San Miguel Gate — an opening as wide as a truck — where cattle once crossed, separating Mexico from the U.S... The Mexican government erected a 50-foot high red beacon here a few years ago. Border agents say its only obvious use is to show immigrants [illegal aliens] where to cross. There are no authorities on either side.

... 3,090 immigrants recently crossed in a single day.

In an unprecedented move along the U.S.-Mexico border, a convoy of 12 pickup trucks packed with suspected illegal immigrants barreled through the Tohono O'odham Nation and tried to run down approaching Border Patrol agents.

Agents stopped six of the vehicles Wednesday night and found 165 people stashed in the beds of the trucks, said Greg Maier, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector.

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — Hemmed in by tighter border controls in California and Texas, thousands of illegal immigrants [illegal aliens] and drug smugglers are flooding this vast Native American reservation southwest of Tucson, leaving chaos, crime and environmental destruction behind.

More than 1,500 immigrants tramp across the Tohono O'odham reservation every day, making it one of the busiest illegal entry points in the country. So far this year, 27,130 people have been arrested in this remote desert. Federal agents have seized a staggering 179,300 pounds of narcotics since October.

The sheer volume of criminal activity and law-enforcement response has made some Indians feel as if they are living in a combat zone... High-speed chases are so frequent that residents rely on police scanners to know when it's safe to go outside. Burglaries are so common that people leave homes unlocked to save doors and windows...

The reservation, roughly the size of Connecticut, shares a 75-mile border with Mexico. The most formidable obstacles are three or four strands of rusty barbed wire...

The Department of Homeland Security this month announced a $10 million plan to help secure Arizona's porous borders, now the main gateway to the United States for illegal immigrants and smugglers... The reservation will get an additional 60 Border Patrol officers.

Many of the 11,000 residents here live in trailers or ramshackle adobe houses surrounded by the twisted saguaros and fragrant mesquite of the Sonoran Desert.

In just one morning earlier this month, Border Patrol officers caught 641 people on the reservation. Last year, 69 people died crossing Native American land. No one knows how many got through.

...according to the National Park Service, Border Patrol plans for Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument include:
° Unlimited cross-country access for motorcycles throughout the monument.
° Four new east/west roads and two backcountry camps in wilderness areas.
° Patrols in wilderness by horseback and use of ATVs on illegal roads created by smugglers and border crossers.
° A gravel road the length of Organ Pipe's 30-mile border with Mexico and a dirt road beside it so agents can track people and vehicles.
° About 10 surveillance towers, 80 to 100 feet high.
It is typically illegal to have roads, vehicles and permanent camps in federal wilderness, which covers 95 percent of the 330,689-acre monument, about 100 miles southwest of Tucson. The 1964 Wilderness Act does allow for exceptions.

Since September 11, 2001 more than two million illegal aliens have been caught trying to sneak across our borders into the United States. Most of the people apprehended have been Mexican Nationals looking for work, but in 2002, about 8,000 of the illegals arrested were “special interest aliens”. What's that term mean? It means that they were from countries with known ties to terror, people from countries like: Libya (search), Pakistan (search), and Iran (search)...

The immigration problems at our border with Mexico are well publicized, but there is another country that may pose an even greater threat to the national security of the United States. Why? Because it has become a safe haven for about 50 terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. But we aren’t talking about Syria, we are talking about Canada, our friend and trading partner to the north. And with over 4000 miles of border between us to protect, the possibilities are frightening

Just ask Chris Simcox, owner of the Tombstone (Ariz.) Tumbleweed newspaper... He's trying to get the word out; few are listening and, apparently, that includes anyone in Washington.

In an e-mail to select correspondents last month, Simcox said there was "another" shootout very similar to others that have occurred with increasingly frequency along remote areas of the Arizona border – areas known to be frequented by drug and alien smugglers and elements of Mexican "authorities" (which often has included federal troops and police) that escort them to the border.

"Details are basically the same; shots fired, assailants get away, drugs seized," he writes. "The [Mexican] soldiers we captured on tape have been seen laying down suppression fire during the drug dealers' dash back across the border – this is not hyperbole – our guys are being fired upon from the other side of the border and they will not return fire. …"

"A high-speed car chase ended with Bisbee police, Border Patrol agents and a detail of the United States Marines coming under automatic weapons fire near the U.S./Mexico border two miles west of Naco, Ariz., on Tuesday morning, Feb. 16," reported Simcox. "Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Susan Herskovits confirmed on Wednesday that the agency is involved in the investigation...

On Feb. 19, says Simcox, "we had yet another incident involving automatic gunfire directed at our [law-enforcement] agents." While he says he wasn't close enough to confirm, it appeared that, at a distance, the law-enforcement "vehicles were full of bullet holes."

WHY, ARIZ. -- Sunset at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was a Kodak moment... rangers had sprung a trap on 21 of those human shadows, all of whom turned out to be illegals trying to reach economic safety in the United States. Thirteen were caught, eight escaped back into the shadows.

"A pretty typical night around here," said Fred Patton, chief ranger at Organ Pipe...

The land set aside to indulge the recreational and environmental sentiments of the planet's wealthiest nation has also become a last-chance backdoor for destitute millions from one of the world's poorest countries literally dying to crash the party. It as also become a back alley for armed and violent drug smugglers.

As many as 400,000 of the illegals try to cross the park each year. Most of them succeed. Some of them die. All of them are leaving an impact that will scar this land for generations. They are the main characters in a sad, sometimes violent drama that plays 365 nights a year -- yet is seldom noticed by the 200,000 legal visitors who see the park each year, mostly by day.

First-timers through the park gates just south of Why experience an almost palpable visual shock, their eyes rocked by shapes and scenes crafted in one of nature's finest special-effects studios.

"...we estimate between 200,000 and 400,000 [illegals] a year try to come through this park."... "We've now got 300 miles of illegal roads these people have cut through the desert, and thousands of miles of illegal trails they've created," Patton said. "We collect over 30 vehicles a year, and we measure the trash they leave behind -- everything from cans and bottles to clothes -- by the ton. And they've fouled the few water sources to the point they are too filthy now even for animals to drink."

The unprecedented effort includes covert officers from a celebrated unit and will draw on 200 extra agents, for a total of 2,000 in this sector...

To complement BORTAC, more than 200 regular patrol agents will be sent to the Tucson sector, bringing the number of agents in the area to more than 2,000, De La Viña said.... For the first time in recent history, the agents were brought into the Tucson sector last summer to deter the human traffic coming across the border.

In 120 days [last summer], a 30-man BORTAC team caught 8,331 illegal immigrants. That represents more than 20 percent of illegal immigrant arrests in the west desert during that same period, according to statistics from the Tucson sector.

Federal law enforcement authorities estimate that approximately 1,500 undocumented migrants [illegal aliens] cross the reservation every day, leaving behind more than six tons of solid waste on their land daily. The Tohono O'odham Nation share more than 75 miles of shared border with Mexico, the largest international border of any tribe in the U.S.

Mexican military forces make so many regular incursions into U.S. territory, Border Patrol officers hand out printed instructions to agents on how to handle the situations, according to "On the Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol," a new book by a seasoned agent.

Alex Pacheco, a Border Patrol agent regularly assigned to San Diego, volunteered for temporary duty in Ajo, Ariz. He writes that in his second week at the new station, the field operations supervisor distributed index cards with instructions on handling "military incursions."

Pacheco and his co-author, Erich Krauss, are scheduled to discuss the book on Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily RadioActive today.

The instructions came under the acronym SALUTE and called for the immediate communication of the following information:

* Size of the unit
* Activity
* Location and direction of travel
* Unit information (if possible)
* Time
* Equipment of the personnel

The instructions included the following warnings, according to Pacheco: "Mexican military are trained to escape, evade and counter-ambush if it will affect their escape."

Pacheco said he learned the Mexican military forces were witnessed crossing the border about once a month and that some 118 incursions had been recorded by the Border Patrol....

Mexican military forces make so many regular incursions into U.S. territory, Border Patrol officers hand out printed instructions to agents on how to handle the situations, according to "On the Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol," a new book by a seasoned agent.

[Illegal aliens] displace American workers by underbidding them. Thirty-six to 42 percent of illegal aliens are on welfare, a remarkable 33 percent of our federal prison population is comprised of non-citizens, and many of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers entered America with fraudulent visa applications or overstayed expired visas... We have 79 different visa programs now, all of which are out of control and broken...

On Jan. 27, the Copley News Service reported that shortly after President Bush announced his plans to amnesty millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., more than half of the Mexicans trying to sneak into the U.S. through San Ysidro told authorities they were doing so to position themselves for the amnesty.

As one member of the U.S. Border Patrol told me, “They believe that they are only responding to an invitation.”

The percentage suggested by Copley probably does not come close to the actual number of people who are running for the American border as word of Bush’s immigration plan spreads through Mexico -- and indeed throughout the world. Mexico, it seems, is now regarded the world over as the doorway to the United States.

In the last several weeks, a staggering 90 percent of all illegal aliens intercepted in one sector in southern Texas claim they’ve come for the amnesty.

Officers of the Border Patrol have now been directed to ask a set of questions of the illegal aliens they apprehend running across the border. One of those questions is: Is the person attempting to illegally enter the U.S. in response to the Bush amnesty proposal?...

“The agents were soon told to stop collecting this information, presumably because it appeared as if the proposal was acting as a lure,” says my source within the Border Patrol.

Word of the 2000-mile wide open door between Mexico and the U.S. has spread far beyond Mexico. It is not just Mexicans who are flooding into our border states anymore. Along with the Nicaraguans, Brazilians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and Chileans, agents of the Border Patrol now encounter Chinese, Pakistanis, and Indians. Nationals of countries other than Mexico are known, in Border Patrol parlance, as “OTMs.” Because they cannot easily be returned to their home country (whereas a Mexican national might be driven right back across the border), OTMs are permitted to enter the U.S. and given a Notice to Appear, which is a piece of paper demanding their appearance before an Immigration Judge.

“I’m an OTM and I want my NTA,” some have been known to declare to the Border Patrol. Rules require that most be given their NTA, upon which the OTM departs forever for some unknown location in America.

“A lot of OTMs want to be caught so they can get their "papers," which makes them legal enough to get past our checkpoint without having to ride in the back of an 18-wheeler or crammed into the trunk of a car,” says one agent.

This is what the Bush amnesty proposal has caused to happen at our border with Mexico. Foreign nationals walk nearly unimpeded into our country -- fully aware of ways in which our immigration laws can be used to their advantage...

...Rangers responded to sensor hits near the Montezuma Pass area of the Coronado National Memorial, a unit of the National Park System that borders the Republic of Mexico. Park rangers were working an illegal immigrant patrol when they encountered two men, guiding at least 30 illegal aliens through the park just after 9 p.m. on February 6th. One of the men pointed a handgun and threatened to shoot the park ranger. The ranger immediately fired one round from his park-issued M-16 rifle at the smuggler...

Police and federal agents were trapped Tuesday morning five miles east of the Naco port of entry by gunfire from men believed to be Mexican drug dealers, officials said.

A plan to secure the western edge of the U.S.-Mexico border by adding two fences and patrolling roads across a sensitive reserve that drains into a national estuary was rejected yesterday by the state Coastal Commission...

The commission voted unanimously to oppose a proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to build the final 3½ miles of what would be a triple-fenced security zone along a 14-mile stretch from the Otay Mesa border crossing to the Pacific Ocean...

Tucson, Arizona, Jan 21 (EFE).-Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, just north of the Mexican border, is on the short list for possible "decommissioning," a status some blame on massive illegal immigration.

The scores of plastic bags, water bottles, empty food cans, old shoes, clothes and toothbrushes discarded by the migrants, besides being an eyesore, are threatening the park's ecosystem, according to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which placed Organ Pipe on its list of 10 most endangered national parks.

"The monument shares a 30-mile border with Mexico that has become an entryway into the United States for thousands of undocumented immigrants," said Ron Tipton, the NPCA's senior vice president of programs...

"This park is under siege and must get immediate attention or we run the risk of losing forever the resources that earned this national treasure a world-class designation as a biosphere reserve," [Ron Tipton, National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA)] added.

CORONADO NATIONAL MEMORIAL - Violence in the Huachuca Mountains has National Park Service rangers here spending more time chasing drug smugglers and illegal immigrants and less time with taxpaying park visitors, the rangers say... "The agencies are usually proactive after somebody dies. Is that what it's going to take? I don't know," Larson said. "We need a lot more manpower, I'd like to see 10."

Just two rangers and a chief ranger guard the memorial, which shares 3.5 miles of border with Mexico, Larson said... The group of [captured] Mexican men agreed to pay $1,500 each for a trip from Naco, Son., over the Huachucas to Phoenix, where some would stay, Martinez said. Others were going as far as Georgia and New York.

Since they didn't make it they won't have to pay. That's the deal...

At a glance:
• More than 9,200 illegal immigrants caught by rangers in the memorial.
• More than 24,700 pounds of marijuana seized in or near the memorial.
• February 1-14, 2004: 160 illegal immigrants caught in the memorial.

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin today announced that President Bush has requested $1.4 million for Fiscal Year 2005 to support border security efforts of the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose reservation in southern Arizona shares a 75-mile border with Mexico.

For years Tohono O'odham tribal members have struggled with the costs associated with trying to curtail the increasing levels of illegal immigration and drug trafficking through their reservation. Such costs include devoting limited tribal resources on border enforcement and to combating robberies against tribal members, as well as providing health care and autopsy services to illegal immigrants and dealing with increased environmental pollution from the litter and waste left behind. Approximately 1,500 illegal immigrants [illegal aliens] cross the Tohono O'odham Nation reservation daily.

In 2002, there were 71,700 reported incidents of illegal immigrant apprehension and contacts in Indian Country with most of those reported by the Tohono O'odham Nation. That year, Tohono O'odham Nation police seized 65,000 pounds of illegal narcotics. In 2003, over 100,000 pounds were confiscated by tribal law enforcement.

The tribe currently has 69 commissioned officers serving the 2.8 million-acre reservation, which has become the route of choice in Arizona for thousands of drug and immigrant [illegal alien] smugglers seeking easy entry into the United States...

Pentagon officials have confirmed human smuggling rings in Latin America are attempting to sneak al-Qaida operatives into the U.S...

Before the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq last year, the U.S. State Department offered congressional testimony that both al-Qaida and the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah were taking firm hold in "America's backyard."...

there was very little doubt most of these visitors went on to find their way to the triple border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. This region, often described as a lawless area, is nicknamed by some intelligence station agents as "The Muslim Triangle meeting zone."...

Intelligence experts have been warning since the late 1990s they had noticed a tendency among Islamic terrorists to operate from Paraguay...

Egyptian intelligence experts active in combating Muslim militancy in Egypt and aware of the role of Egyptian militants in the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban, told G2 Bulletin last year that Islamic terrorists shifted their interest from training pilots in the U.S. to schools in South America, where they can study and train practically without any security agencies on their heels...

More recently, al-Qaida has become deeply involved in cocaine and heroine trafficking, arms and uranium smuggling, counterfeiting CDs and DVDs and money-laundering activities in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The tri-border region is known as the heart of Islamic activity in Latin America.

Of growing concern to some U.S. officials is the way the terrorists south of the border might use lax immigration standards to slip into the U.S...

President Bush’s proposed immigration reform package is a shocking betrayal of our nation’s sovereignty, culture and economy. It must not be allowed to pass...

“This plan is not amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path of citizenship,” insisted Mr. Bush at a January 12 press conference in Monterrey, Mexico, as he stood alongside Mexican President Vicente Fox. “I oppose amnesty because it encourages the violation of our laws and perpetuates illegal immigration.”...

It’s vitally important to recognize that the Bush plan would not be limited to the current illegal alien population, which is commonly estimated to be 6-12 million (but may be 20 million or more). As the president’s own words demonstrate, it would also extend to “those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program.”...

Supposedly, those coming from foreign countries would need a job offer in advance of their arrival. But the president’s invitation had an immediate, and quite predictable, effect. “The U.S. Border Patrol marks January 7 as the day illegal crossing numbers surge,” reported a January 10 Arizona Star dispatch from the Mexican border town of Hermosillo. “We’re starting to see an increase already,” commented Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame. It’s reasonable to expect that a similar “amnesty rush” is underway elsewhere as millions — or tens of millions — of others race to take advantage of the Bush plan...

Ah, but that plan isn’t an amnesty, insists the president, clinging to his official fiction... Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) has no use for such evasions. “Millions of people who broke the law by entering, staying, and working in our country will not be punished, but rather rewarded with a visa,” comments Rep. Paul. “This is amnesty, plain and simple. Lawbreakers are given legal status, while those seeking to immigrate legally face years of paperwork and long waits for a visa.”...

More disturbing still is the fact that the Bush plan represents merely the first installment. The Mexican regime has already broadcast demands for further concessions... [including]... Legalization of “undocumented” workers (that is, illegal aliens from Mexico);

Every American worthy of the name must not accept this incredible betrayal — and must not allow it to be consummated.

Mexico's workers in the U.S. now send more money back to their home country than Mexico receives in foreign investment....

Last year, Mexican workers sent an estimated $13.27 billion home... Mexico's economy still badly needs reforms.... Especially when you consider that its population is expanding faster than its economy. So as the economy grows, people get worse off... more than 50% of the population gets by on less than $4,000 a year, which explains the human flood tide into the U.S.

...Mexico adds nearly 1 million people to its own work force each year...

...The National Research Council found the average immigrant [illegal alien] lacking a high school education imposes a net fiscal burder of $89,000 on U.S. taxpayers. Coupled with an estimated $9 billion spent yearly on health care for illegals, the tab is substantial.

FLORENCE, Ariz. — Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly from Central and South America, are being released into the USA almost immediately after they are picked up by the Border Patrol as part of a policy that U.S. officials acknowledge represents a significant gap in homeland security.

The treatment of illegal immigrants from Mexico has not changed. U.S. Border Patrol agents continue to catch and deport waves of Mexican illegals, who last year accounted for most of the 905,000 people caught sneaking into the USA along the 2,000-mile Southwestern border.

But deporting illegals from countries other than Mexico — known here as "OTMs" — is far more complicated. Several Central and South American governments have been reluctant to accept groups of people for repatriation. And the Department of Homeland Security, while spending billions of dollars on a range of anti-terrorist programs, has a limited budget for renting detention cells at local jails.

The result: With no place to put thousands of captured illegals from Central and South America, the Border Patrol has begun releasing them after giving them written orders to appear at deportation hearings in nearby U.S. cities. Immigration officials acknowledge the exercise is futile: About 86% of those issued such notices never show up for the court hearings...

In recent months, immigration officials have been monitoring a flood of Brazilians into Arizona. Carrying passports and other identification documents, many of the Brazilians have intentionally surrendered to U.S. agents so they could quickly get notices to appear in court — and then move on to Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles and communities in New Jersey...

"It's a complete farce," [Sheriff] Jernigan says. "It tells me that our doors are wide open for anyone to come in."

A group of civilian volunteer U.S.-Mexico border watchers say they witnessed an incursion into the U.S. by 22 armed Mexican militiamen – and photographed the encounter with the paramilitary patrol.

Chris Simcox, editor and publisher of the Tombstone, Arizona, Tumbleweed and founder of Civil Homeland Defense, a group that attempts to aid the Border Patrol nab illegal aliens, said the confrontation occurred the morning of Saturday, Jan. 24. Simcox, accompanied by a photographer and a video journalist, says the trio ran into a "squad" of armed Mexicans in olive drab uniforms in two military-type vehicles...

Tucson, Arizona, Jan 21 (EFE).-Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, just north of the Mexican border, is on the short list for possible "decommissioning," a status some blame on massive illegal immigration.

The scores of plastic bags, water bottles, empty food cans, old shoes, clothes and toothbrushes discarded by the migrants, besides being an eyesore, are threatening the park's ecosystem, according to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which placed Organ Pipe on its list of 10 most endangered national parks.

"The monument shares a 30-mile border with Mexico that has become an entryway into the United States for thousands of undocumented immigrants," said Ron Tipton, the NPCA's senior vice president of programs...

"This park is under siege and must get immediate attention or we run the risk of losing forever the resources that earned this national treasure a world-class designation as a biosphere reserve," [Ron Tipton, National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA)] added.

Captions under photos:

Three armed men run up a hill after being caught in the act of entering the United States.

Men armed with rifles run away after being caught in the act of crossing the fence into U.S. territory. Heavily armed patrol questions presence of U.S. journalists on border fence.

Four members of a 22 man squad of “soldiers” walk away after encounter with journalists on the U.S. Mexico border in Cochise County Arizona.

Three hours after the encounter with soldiers CHD volunteers find the first group of a literal wave of people entering the country illegally. Many of them questioned why they were being detained, “We have come for our Amnesty”, one man told the first Border Patrol agent to arrive. The agent thanked us for our help.

A group of illegals awaits Border Patrol after encountering CHD volunteers in the same location. Border Patrol arrived after almost an hour wait. The agent never got out of his vehicle and was told by a supervisor over the radio to leave the area for a more “high priority” call. We had to let the group go; we followed them back to the border asking them to return through legal channels. They laughed and sat down to wait until we left the area then crossed over again. Border Patrol is overwhelmed to the breaking point. They can’t even round up 20 % of the illegals invading our country.

More than 2.2 million pounds of illicit drugs worth $11 billion were seized last year by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, who also confiscated $52 million in cash at the nation's seaports and land borders, CBP Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said yesterday...

According to records, the officers made 17,716 marijuana seizures for 2.1 million pounds; 2,255 cocaine seizures for 90,305 pounds; 772 heroin seizures for 3,875 pounds; and 375 methamphetamine seizures for 3,134 pounds. There also were 1,337 currency seizures, totaling $52 million...

Some of last year's record seizures, according to the records:
• The Bridge of the Americas in El Paso, Texas.
• Laredo, Texas, port of entry.
• A south Texas checkpoint.
• Sumas, Wash., port of entry.
CBP, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, also collected $24.7 billion in duties and importation fees during 2003 at the nation's seaports and border crossings, nearly $1 billion more than 2002's total of $23.8 billion...

..Organ Pipe borders Mexico for 30 miles, with that nation's busy Highway 2 often visible from the flimsy border fence.

Arizona 85 - the road Tucsonans take to Rocky Point - runs through the park and has become a prime route for narcotics and illegal migrants heading north. High-speed chases occur regularly. Some end when rangers - armed with military-style AR-15 assault rifles - deploy spikes to flatten the tires of vehicles fleeing back to Mexico...

Park officials say border crossers spook endangered species, dump tons of trash in the wilderness and have blazed 250 miles of roads through the park in the past four years...

In 2002, park rangers made 100 felony arrests and seized 14,000 pounds of pot. Those figures declined last year, Patton said, but only because the park was focusing more on training an influx of new rangers.

The quadrupling of law enforcement staffers at Organ Pipe followed Eggle's Aug. 9, 2002, murder...Eggle was pursuing a Mexican national who had driven through a border fence just east of Lukeville. Authorities say Eggle's killer, who was later shot by Mexican agents firing from their side of the border, had been involved in a drug-related quadruple homicide.

Eggle's death also spurred the Park Service to approve a low-slung vehicle barrier along the border with Mexico - a measure the park had sought for years. The $17 million project is expected to be complete in 2005...

But, Kendrick [Randall Kendrick, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police's U.S. Park Rangers Lodge] said, the vehicle barrier may simply push illegal traffic onto neighboring Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, which has hardly any law enforcement resources.

Drug smugglers have used Organ Pipe for decades, but the flow of migrants there has jumped since 1998, when the Border Patrol began stepping up enforcement in nearby border cities, said agency spokesman Andy Adame.

For some reason, and with deadly consequences, migrant traffic in Organ Pipe peaks in summer, when the area has some of the continent's hottest weather. The Border Patrol, which quadrupled the number of agents in its Tucson sector since 1998, will have an increased presence at Organ Pipe this summer, Adame said...

The National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 9,000 of the Border Patrol´s nonsupervisory agents, has told its members to challenge President Bush´s proposed guest-worker program, calling it a "slap in the face to anyone who has ever tried to enforce the immigration laws of the United States."...

"The border is, maybe, 10 percent more secure than it was prior to September 11, but it is still out of control," [National Border Patrol Council Vice President John Frecker] said.