Ay Dios mío...
"...Latin America — the potential last frontier for international terrorism."
The territory could be a perfect staging ground for Osama bin Laden's militants, with homegrown rebel groups, drug and people smugglers, and corrupt governments. U.S. officials have long feared al-Qaida could launch an attack from south of the border, and they have been paying closer attention as the number of terror-related incidents has increased since last year. ...In Central America, Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said officials have uncovered evidence that terrorists, likely from al-Qaida, may be trying to recruit Hondurans to carry out attacks in Central America.
I say we fill the Rio Grande with piranhas and man-eating crocs and construct pill boxes and gun towers every 50 yards along the border.
The cost and bother of constant trespass and the fear of theft and burglary have meant that many rural people in Cochise County, where Douglas is located, are now arming themselves. Warning shots have been fired and many are worried that something worse might happen. What frightens the ranchers most, however, is not the aliens but rather drug smugglers. These are well-armed men, some carrying fully automatic weapons. Ranchers in both San Diego and Cochise Counties have reported seeing armed men on the U.S. side of the border, military in appearance, dressed in black, and armed with automatic rifles.Some believe that they are from the Mexican army acting in support of smugglers. Whether they are or not, however, Mexican army units and armed police are frequently reported entering U.S. territory, a violation that evokes angry response when U.S. authorities stray across the border into Mexico. Ron Sanders was for five years the chief of the Tucson sector of the border patrol until his retirement in August 1999. Hardly a month goes by, he said, without some kind of incursion by Mexican police or military. Sometimes shooting is involved. He recalls an armed stand-off on the U.S. side of the border between the Nogales police and the Mexican army.
The latest publicized incursion took place in March near Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Two Mexican army Humvees penetrated more than a mile into the United States and fired on a mounted border patrolman and on a border-patrol vehicle. The soldiers were detained but were later returned to Mexico along with their weapons. There was no official protest from Washington, even though firing on a U.S. law officer is a felony offense.
Drug smugglers often use lonely and difficult trails through the mountains, or go on horseback through more remote parts of the desert. At times they mingle with groups of aliens, or follow them for cover. On occasion they also use aliens as "mules" to carry drugs across the border in payment for their passage. One rancher near Douglas tells of a young illegal who knocked at a neighbor's door one night. The young man had slipped away from his group because its guide had forced them all to carry illicit drugs. Fearing they might all end up killed, he ran to the nearest house begging the rancher to call the police.
As the situation near Douglas worsened, some of the ranchers decided to take action on their own. Roger Barnett owns a 22,000-acre ranch outside Douglas. Soon he and his brother Don, like his neighbor Larry Vance and others, began rounding up aliens on their property and holding them until the border patrol arrived to arrest them. Advocacy groups howled in protest, as did the Mexican government. Their lawyers demanded that the ranchers be prosecuted for false arrest, kidnapping, intimidation, criminal assault, violation of civil rights, in short anything lawyers can come up with to advance their clients' interests. Larry Vance retorted that "the only rights that have been violated are those of American citizens whose privacy, property, and nation are invaded from Mexico."
...the Mexican press demonized the ranchers as "racist xenophobic vigilantes" who hunted down innocent Mexican migrants like animals.
...The majority of Americans favor immigration control. This includes half the Latino population. Yet the addiction of American agriculture and some industries to cheap foreign labor creates contradictory interests within the country and an attempt by the government to cover both bases at once. Thus we see the passage of restrictive laws and border shell games to keep the public quiet (no one of either party wants another Proposition 187), while at the same time underfunding enforcement and turning a blind eye so that business can continue as usual.