Desert Invasion - U.S.

Environmental Damage at the Arizona-Mexico Border and Intrusion into the Lives of Americans Living There, by Diana Hull, Ph.D., 2002


This inadequately protected area in and around the small ranching towns of Bisbee and Douglas were inundated last year by 1 to 3 million illegal aliens most of whom escaped into the interior of the United States.
Intense and successful operations by the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas and San Diego has funneled illegals and drug smugglers through Cochise County in southern Arizona. This inadequately protected area in and around the small ranching towns of Bisbee and Douglas were inundated last year by 1 to 3 million illegal aliens most of whom escaped into the interior of the United States. Only one half million were apprehended by border patrol agents.
 
Environmental groups ignore the damage this is causing to our National Forests, and recently a revived Sanctuary Movement wants to rescue the immigrants and help transport them north. The Border Patrol in what is called the "Tucson sector" has been increased from 287 agents in 1994, to 1400 today. But they are unable to guard the entire 83 miles of border [in the Tucson Sector] that Arizona shares with Mexico. Yet because of the increased personnel here, other parts of the southern border and the border with Canada have become more vulnerable.
 
Bisbee has a population of 125,000 people. Cocaine smuggling has been rampant since the 1980's, but now this small county has become the major corridor for drugs in the United States. It has also become a center for the smuggling of people. Like drugs, people smuggling is a multi-million dollar business. Reliable local observers say one large truck can hold about 70 illegal aliens and that gives the smuggler a $70,000 profit for the two hour drive from the border to Tucson.
 
Larry Dever, the Sheriff of Cochise County... was particularly critical of the federal government because they have "not only failed to protect our properties and our people," but, at the same time, "claim a propriety and sole authority to do so."
Last June 27th [2002] Larry Dever, the Sheriff of Cochise County, talked about what he called "the emergency situation in Arizona" in his testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, chaired by Senator Jon Kyl. He called it "a challenge of unprecedented proportions." He told the Subcommittee that on his visits to Mexico, he has seen the building of enormous new infrastructure designed to support alien smuggling operations. Cochise County is a target, he said, because there is lots of water in the San Pedro River, in wells, ponds and stock tanks and lots of remote places where aliens can find cover and hide. There is also access to rural roads that lead to highways that connect with all major US cities.
 
Sheriff Dever said that the surge of illegal immigrants through his county has damaged or destroyed water resources, that fences are routinely cut on private and public property, and that the land is now littered with tons of garbage, clothing and human waste. He was particularly critical of the federal government because they have "not only failed to protect our properties and our people," but, at the same time, "claim a propriety and sole authority to do so."
 
He was talking about how private individuals were criticized as vigilantes when they tried to defend themselves. Rancher-business man Roger Barnett, for example, who has received some national publicity, reports constant vandalism on his ranch and describes how little is done about it by law enforcement. Mr. Barnett says that the people who live in his area are very much on their own as smugglers march illegal immigrants for miles through private ranches and suburban back yards. They do this, he says, mainly at night. Once these groups get about 20 miles from the border, there is almost no chance they will be apprehended.
 
Attempts to detain immigrants on your property, while you wait for the Border Patrol, are often investigated by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to see if any law has been broken. Then the Mexican Consulate must be advised so it can ensure the rights of their citizens and provide them with legal counsel if needed.
 
Americans have fewer protections. Chris M. Roll, the Cochise County Attorney, told the Senate Subcommittee about the increase of border predators-robbers, rapists and kidnappers who prey on both US residents and illegal aliens.
 
The United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, Jose de Jesus Riviera, described to the Senate Subcommittee the problems with home invasion burglaries, slaughter of livestock, the draining of water systems and the huge quantities of refuse left in the immigrant's wake. He also warned about increasing bands of "drug backpackers" who cross private property in groups, usually carrying firearms. Just considering the environmental damage alone, we can wonder why those dedicated to the protection of the land and its resources have not intervened forcefully in the way they have done, for example, in my home county of Santa Barbara, California, with lawyers representing environmental groups ever ready to go to court on behalf of possible damage to oaks, endangered species, habitat or wetlands if they are disturbed in any way by the actions of California ranchers or farmers on their own property. If there are similar organizations in Arizona, the vast environmental damage being done by hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants does not seem to disturb them.
 
Here are examples of what the immigration invasion has wrought in publicly owned resources like the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Coronado National Forest and the San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area. Jesse Juen, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Field Representative in Tuscon told the Senate Subcommittee that, over the past two years wildfires caused by immigrants smoking cigarettes or building fires to warm themselves at night have destroyed about 20% of the riparian vegetation along the San Pedro River in Cochise County. Plastic water bottles, food wrappers, toilet paper and human feces cover large areas where fences have been cut for the passage of human coyotes. Mr. Juen said the off-road vehicles of alien smugglers often go down steep embankments and motor oil and fuel leaks into streams and endangered species habitat.
 
The Bureau of Land Management's own facilities, living quarters, storage sheds and workshops are regularly broken into and vandalized. Concern for individual safety now require these employees to travel in pairs. Mr. Juen said regretfully that the environmental damage in the Riparian National Conservation area is stripping away the natural resources that the RNC was created to conserve.
 
James K. Bellamy is Superintendent of the Coronado National Memorial in southeastern Arizona, a unit of the National Park System consisting of 4,750 acres of oak woodland and grassland with 3.5 miles bordering Mexico. His testimony to the Senate Subcommittee emphasized the 300% escalation in illegal immigrant traffic this year and how his rangers no longer apprehend illegal border crossers because of the sheer numbers of entrants compared to the size of the combined force of the Border Patrol and the Park Rangers.
 
Mr. Bellamy told the Senate Subcommittee that human foot traffic through the park has created trails the width of roads. Vegetation is trampled to such an extent that steep hillsides have been eroded and much ground laid bare-with litter widespread-like discarded clothing, blankets, food containers, toilet paper and human excrement.
 
The plight of Cochise County is California's plight too because 40% of all. illegal immigrants are heading our way. So what, if anything, will the United States Senate, awash in contributions from the cheap labor lobby, do about this, if anything, and will our new President give more than lip service to protecting our borders? Ten years after the cold war, U.S. military forces are still stationed in 100 different countries all over the world.
 
Now added to decades of political paralysis comes another dysfunctional response to this violation of our boundaries and our laws. Here come the rescuers--not of our land, but of those who invade us, acting with the blessing and encouragement of the Mexican government. Catholic, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches in Arizona are reviving the Sanctuary movement of the 1980's and actively helping illegal aliens avoid detection--giving them aid and encouragement and even transporting them north.
 
We have not heard even the mildest of "peeps" from the Sierra Club. With environmental groups these days, "Social Justice" in the form of "immigrants rights" trumps concern about overpopulation, damage to plants, land and wildlife, and the quality of life in the United States.
While valuing every human life is a religious and moral ideal, practical ethics is rarely so simple. Thoughtless compassion is like saving the tree while ignoring the health of the woodland environment and the human and animal creatures who need it for sustenance. A nation is easily as complicated as a forest and the righteous often only see the very few trees right in front of their eyes.
 
Even if the Americans who live in Southern Arizona are of little consequence to the US Congress and to the sanctimonious Sanctuary Movement, surely someone, some group must be willing to defend our threatened environment! We have not heard even the mildest of "peeps" from the Sierra Club. Their silence is deafening, so what can that mean?
 
Evidently political correctness demands that you first consider who is destroying the environment--not the extent of the destruction itself nor whether it should be stopped. With environmental groups these days, "Social Justice" in the form of "immigrants rights" trumps concern about overpopulation, damage to plants, land and wildlife, and the quality of life in the United States. These priorities mirror those of the Ford and associated major charitable foundations from whom both the National Counsel of La Raza and the Sierra Club get financial support.
 
Makers of public policy might consider the concerns of Professor Samuel P. Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University and founder of Foreign Policy quarterly. In an address last July he said, "Mexican immigration is a unique, disturbing and looming challenge to our cultural integrity, our national identity, and potentially to our future as a country."
 
Diana Hull, Ph.D. is President of CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization). a non profit, public interest organization that works to protect California's environment and quality of life.